The Asylum
by Cyrus559
Summary: Comicverse. Dean got a letter one day, telling he is going to inherit an old abandoned institute someplace far away. Will, Susan and her little brother William are coming with him to look at it, but everything may not be as they seems. Upon arrivale, Will senses there are far more to the old building then her parents suspects. Can she keep her family safe without reveal her secret?
1. Chapter 1

This is my first story, so please be kind. Reviews are welcome.

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own W.I.T.C.H. they belongs Walt Disney Company Italia and I make no money on this.

This story is mainly based on the comics, and the girls have their new enchanted powers and set around three years later. But you can also read it if you only have seen the TV shows because it is mainly about Will and her family, then only thing you need to know is as follows; Yan Lin is the new Oracle, Dean and Susan are married and Will now have a little brother, William, who is three years old in this story.

* * *

Will Vandom was bored, and it was official. She, her mother Susan, her baby brother William and her stepfather Dean had been sitting in their car the entire day due to a letter Dean had received a couple days before. It was from a lawyer telling that his elderly aunt had died, and he was going to inherit some sort of huge building in the middle of nowhere. Of course, this meant they all had to come to have a look and see what they were going to do with it. Luckily, nothing had been heard from Kandrakar lately, so she didn't have to come up with some wild excuse for not coming with them this time. She had to make quite a few of them over the last years, and it could from one time to another put a strain on their mother-daughter relationship. Susan could clearly see through her excuses and knew that at least some of them were lies, but hopefully she thought it was a part of being a teenager and rebellious. But it was worse when something came up when Susan planned some family time together. She thought her daughter still hadn't accepted her new husband which also happened to be her (by now) former history teacher. The truth was that Will had grown fond of her new dad, but it seemed Susan didn't understand that yet. Therefor Will hadn't put up any argument when her mother had asked her to come with them, but after eight hours stuck in a car she had began to regret.

"Are we there soon" Will said to the two adults sitting in the front.

"Will! Can you please stop asking the same question over and over again; we will be there when we arrive and not a moment sooner," Susan said, clearly tired and irritated over the immature behavior of her daughter.

Luckily Dean understood from experience what would be coming next and hurried to break in between them. "Don't worry; we are almost there, just a couple of minutes left I think".

"Good" said Will and looked out the car window, "I was beginning to wonder if we would run out of roads soon".

Susan made a sound but didn't say anything. It was in the late autumn/early winter, the leaves had fallen of the trees, but the snow had yet to arrive, something that made the forest they were driving through kind of spooky. Will just looked out the window and thought of her friends and fellow guardians back in Heatherfield. " _Oh I wish I could hear Irma crack a joke about Cornelia, Taranee telling about her pictures of rare mushrooms or listen to one of Hay Lin's words of wisdom, anything but being here,_ " Will thought while watching endless columns of twisted grey old trees passing them. She decided to try to start a civil conversation and turned to her rescuer. "What sort of house is this? You been here before Dean?"

"The letter said it was an old asylum of some kind; my aunt seemed to have been one of their employees there. It closed several years ago, but for some reason she was allowed to not only live there, but also buy it for almost nothing."

"I wonder why," said Susan and stared out of the window, tired of the long trip herself.

"If I should guess," Said the history teacher, "she must have been a good friend of the last owner who also happened to be the boss there. Neither of them were married or had children, so I assume it was more of a friendly gift to her. I have never been there and had almost forgotten I had an aunt altogether. She never showed up on family meetings, holydays or came for any visits, and we never visited her. I don't think I ever saw her, and I have only a few old photos of her."

Susan put a hand in front of her mouth to hide a yawn. "Strange then, you have an aunt you never have met that let you inherit a huge house in the middle of nowhere."

"Yeah, that and the other pack you got with a ridiculous looking good luck charm." Will commented from the back seat.

"Will" Susan said in a resigned voice.

Dean however, being a man interested in history, pulled his newly inherited charm out from his pocket and decided to enlighten his trapped audience; "It is an old arrow head in fact, made of iron and if I am not entirely wrong it is made by the natives here around the seventeenth century. As you probably know, before the colonists came, they were made of stone, but later…"

While Dean was speaking, they passed over a stone bridge with a tiny river running under it. The river came from the towering mountains close by, and suddenly they found themselves driving through a tiny village consisting of old shaky houses. They had started their trip early the same morning, but now it was going to be dark soon. The setting sun made the grim buildings and the few people who were out, casting long shadows. "

Perhaps we should stop and ask the locals how far we are from this _institute_ " Susan asked Dean, "and perhaps they know if there is a place where we can eat dinner before we starve to death."

"Wise words my dear," said Dean happily agreeing with his wife.

The guardian of the infinite universes just sighted and looked at her little brother who luckily slept. A couple of hours earlier he had been crying and made the mood sore for everyone in the car. They had all understood the issues of traveling with a small child in a car before they left, but unfortunately, they did not find anyone who could look after the three year old toddler. Dean, Susan and Will looked around to see if there was any sign that could tell them where they were and if there was any restaurant close by. Susan was the first to spot anything. "Over there!" She said, " _Ye Old Inn_ , I guess we could eat there."

"Alright then we pull over," Dean said. He had been the driver for the last four hours and was quite eager to have a break.

The inn lived up to it's name, Will could tell. The building was an old two stories stone house, perhaps from eighteen century. The roof was made of stone, and had a tall chimney at the top, missing so much of the stones that it had to be hazardous to lit a fire in the fireplace in case what was left would come falling down. Nevertheless, it made Will's mood increase, finally a break from the road and a chance for a good meal. Will woke her half-brother and lifted him out of his seat. William was still sleepy and didn't make much sound while she carried him while walking beside her parents towards the inn.

The inside wasn't all that cozy as Will had imagined, it was just a plain inn with a bar were food was ordered and some tables with a variable numbers of chairs scattered around. At the wall at the end of the room to the right side of her was the fireplace. No fire was lit, and it was quite likely many years since the last time. When they came inside, they were greeted with suspicious glares from the few locales who were there, but the people quickly went back to their own business.

"What do you want?" asked Susan her daughter.

"Just pick something you know I like, if they have it! I will take William and find a place to sit" Will said.

"Hamburger then" said Susan, and rolled with her eyes and went together with Dean to order.

Will found a table with four chairs close to the dead fireplace and with a window looking outwards to the forest and mountains at the distance. "Oh William, how I wish we could be home instead, watching TV and have a nice dinner there. Instead we are in an old rundown Inn, exactly in the middle of God knows where. This place isn't like _The Silver Dragon_." William stared at her for a couple of seconds before his attention went to his surroundings.

"Take it easy Will, we will only stay here for a couple of days while we look at the building, it isn't like we are going to move here" said Dean as he came and sat down beside her. At the bar she could see Susan take up a board with some drinks. "Perhaps we should try to ask some of the people here if they know about this place and if we are heading in the right direction," Dean suggested.

"It is an old asylum, I think they will know if we try," said Will.

Susan came with their drinks, coke for Will, water and coffee for herself and her husband. Susan and Dean chatted a little while Will played with her brother before their dinner arrived. It was a fat old man who came with it, and when he placed their food before them Dean sized the opportunity and asked. "Excuse me mister. Do you know if there is an old asylum close by the name of St. Georges Asylum, you see…"

More he didn't ask, because the waiters face suddenly froze and Will saw he started to look around himself. She instantly became aware that the other guests had suddenly halted with whatever they were doing and shot dark glares towards them. The waiter looked grimly back at her stepdad. Then he said with a low voice "Why do you ask?"

"Well, you see," the teacher continued, "I got this letter saying that my aunt had passed away and I was going to meet some lawyer regarding that old institution."

"If you know what is best for you and your little family, stay away from that place!" almost snarled the man before he turned his back and disappeared right into the kitchen behind the bar.

"Geez, what an attitude," huffed Susan and looked apologetic to Dean. Will on the other side had already some years of experience with people who wanted others to "mind their own business," and that usually meant something was lurking behind. Her mind quickly went into guardian mode, trying to come up with some possible explanation for his behavior. The dinner was consumed in silence after that, only disturbed by Williams occasionally attempt to say something meaningful or comment the surroundings with his still limited vocabulary. But the temperature had dropped significantly at the Inn.

* * *

Will had just closed the door to the Inn and began walking back to their car with her family when suddenly an elderly man out of nowhere came walking towards them. He was clad in an old green coat and had a blue cap on his head, his thin white hear stuck out like straws from under it in all directions. His face was weary and hunted as it had seen and experienced ages of despair, but when the man looked at them, Will felt his eyes pierce her like two sharp needles. He also had a shaggy beard that was three –to –four days old and was becoming more white than grey.

"What is this about," he sneered, "you aren't going to the old asylum, are you?"

"Yes we are" said Susan "Can you tell us anything about it?"

The old man looked at her mother with a scorn, and first Will thought he wouldn't answer, but then he decided to speak.

"Why?"

Susan, satisfied that somebody would say something went straight to the point, "You see, we are going to meet someone there and have a look at it."

"Ah, you must be Vandom," he said and suddenly his scorn disappeared and was replaced by an eerie grin that almost split his grim face.

"How did you know?" Susan said surprised.

"Small town you know," he said and continued, "The old lady passed away not long ago and it was rumored that someone would inherit the entire estate. As an old employee she knew the place well and kept it somewhat in order, perhaps to keep herself busy with something."

"But why is people here so reluctant to speak about it?" said Susan and crossed her arms.

"It was an old monastery, turned to an asylum for the mentally ill and disturbed right after the turn of the century. It was the biggest employer in this village and many people here had jobs, which in some way or another was linked to it. However, the asylum had to close in the nineteen eighties. It is said it was not because for the lack of patients, but because patients disappeared.

"They disappeared?" Will interrupted.

"They just disappeared, one by one. Some of the staff said they heard screams in the middle of the night, none can be sure, the people who lived there could suddenly start to shout and scream at any time for any reason. Anyway, people could go to sleep in their bed one night, the next morning they were gone. It wasn't regular, it was one every now and then. At first the staff thought it was an ordinary escape attempt, however, around here it is only this tiny village, and the rest of it is mountains and wilderness. None here ever saw anyone from the asylum who tried to escape, so it was concluded that the patients who went missing escaped up into the mountains or into the surrounding forest. But none was ever found. Then people started to look at some of the staff and the institute chief to see if they could be behind the disappearances and it was opened an investigation. However, it led to nothing, some tried to blame the chief of the asylum and said he was hiding something, but it was only rumors and lies, but some more patients vanished, and the relatives of the missing people demanded the asylum closed. And so it was. After that, the old building fell into decay and no one have hardly been there ever since except from your relative. The most likely explanation for all this is that the people who disappeared, managed to sneak out and get lost in these woods. Because, when you leave the asylum, there is nothing but dense forest and mountains for miles upon miles around here." Then he turned to Will and said with a low voice, "People say that if you go into the woods after dark, you can hear the voices of people who walked in, but never found the way out, calling for help that can never reach them."

When the story was finished, three different faces stared back at the weary old man. Will had listened to the story carefully, and had a suspicious glare. Dean Collins was had one of fear and uncertainty, Susan on the other hand looked disbelieving and was the first of them to raise her voice.

"You don't expect us to believe in that sort of nonsense, do you?" She said with a stern voice, and glared back at him. "There is no such thing as ghosts or other supernatural phenomena."

Will took a secret look at her mother and thought, " _Oh if you only knew. But if you did, would you be scared of me or angry?_ " The last thought made the elemental guardian nervous. It made Will feel somewhat bad, of course her mother loved her, and she loved her back, and so did Dean. But the thought of her mother's reaction if she ever found out of her daughter being not so little supernatural herself was enough to make her shiver. Susan could be a frightening woman if she became angry. The less she knew about her double life, the better.

"Very well, you do as you please, like the place or leave it be. Most of the stories around it is just rumors anyway, but do you plan to reopen it," the man said.

"No," Dean answered, "We are only going to have a look, I inherited it from a rarely seen aunt, but I haven't accepted it as an inheritance yet. I will first see in what condition the building is before I decide. If it is decaying as you say, I would rather reject it and leave it to the state, I have no personal interests in it."

The white bearded man looked at them and turned back while he said "That's good. Have a look and leave it alone as fast as you can, it is probably the best you can do." And with that he disappeared behind a house corner, leaving the Vandoms to themselves. Dean swallowed nervously, but didn't say anything, his wife had clearly stated what she thought of old houses and superstitions and he wouldn't argue against her. He didn't believe in ghosts himself either, but even a grown man is allowed to be scared.

After they got inside the car, Dean opened a road map he bought and looked how far they were from their destination. "Ah look! We are almost there, we only have about fifteen minutes left after we are out of this village."

"Great" said Susan, "I can't wait to see it."

Will turned to Dean and asked, "Where are we going to stay for tonight, if this place have been abounded for the last twenty years, we can't possible sleep there, can we?"

"Don't worry Will, if the what the old geezer said is true and my and kept it in order, the place, or at least some of the rooms must be in a livable condition and if not, we look for a room down here in the village." For some unknown reason that didn't make Will feel any better.

"So you mean we are going to sleep where an old women recently have died?"

"WILL" shouted her mother and turned around, "I want to hear none of that stuff from you. It was Deans aunt, meaning a family and you will treat her like that too."

Once more Will sent her silent gratitude to her stepdad when he came to her rescue. "Oh no harm done, as I said, I have hardly ever seen her, if I met her in her old age, I would never have recognized her. I wasn't even invited to her funeral!"

" _Perhaps she is still lying on her bed then_ " Will thought grimly to herself. After that it didn't take long before they were out of the village again, and just as Dean had said, fifteen minutes later they drove up a hill and got their first sight of the old monastery turned asylum; and what a sight!


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer; I don't own W.I.T.C.H., perhaps you already knew that.**

 **Thank you for your reviews on the last chapter, I Will try to update this story once a week, so stay tuned...**

* * *

"It is beautiful," Susan exclaimed. Will and Dean could only agree with the woman's remark. The old monastery building was truly gorgeously. Upon a hill was a long neo gothic building of stone with elaborate carvings and gargoyles. The front, facing the road were they came, was probably a hundred meter in length and three stories high with multiple windows, and at the center was an entrance that could have belonged to a cathedral. The steep roof was made of stone with a dozen chimneys on top of it. The dense forest surrounded the asylum, closing it in from every angle with ancient oak trees and pines. As they approached the building, Will realized that the magnificent building had the shape of a horseshoe. It was even more of it stretching further behind. Dean had no problem finding a parking spot, what probably was the old monastery garden once, must have been turned into a parking lot when it was remade into an asylum. No other cars were seen there for obvious reasons, and the space was big enough for around thirty cars, so the process of parking took comfortable two seconds.

Susan and Dean quickly left the car, it took a moment longer for Will because she had to take her little brother with her.

When they all had gathered themselves on the outside, Susan said, "We leave the luggage in the car for now while we look for a place to sleep for the night, because if there isn't we will have to drive back to the village and see if they have a room for us there."

Dean's face suddenly got very bleak, probably at the thought of sleeping inside the old asylum, so Will decided to walk up to him. "Did the old man's story frighten you?" She asked.

"No of course not," he said, not entirely convincing Will. "But I didn't imagined the institute to be of this size, it is enormous, I wonder of many rooms there are."

"Well, if I should guess from the first look of it, I would say we might find a room or two if we look reeealy hard." Will said jokingly.

Then Will took William's hand and put on a brave smile not to worry Dean any further, but on the inside, she felt uneasy, the story seemed scarier now as she looked up at the house and the dark forest. True enough, it was an architectural masterpiece but its bleak loneliness in the middle of a dark forest made her feel anxious. Its dark grey walls, tall and imposing, telling people to stay away, unwilling to let reveal its hidden secrets. People who came, but never left… She shook her head, she was a witch for goodness sake, or rather a guardian of an infinite number of universes, she had seen and met things nobody else ever could dream about, and not only that, she had the heart of Kandrakar and was probably one of the most powerful beings on earth. However, that was together with her fellow guardians and best friends, right now, she was just Will Vandom and felt uneasy.

"Were we not supposed to meet the lawyer here?" Asked Will.

"Yes, but he won't be here before tomorrow evening, so before he comes we will have the time to explore and see what we are going to do with the building," said Susan and started to walk to the stairs leading up to the gothic entrance with double wooden oak doors.

Dean and Will stood for a while, just looking as Susan made her way to the front doors, the setting sun made everything around them glow in magnificent red and gold. However, this also made the inside of the windows look black as the darkest night as nothing could be seen through them from the outside. Susan, now on top of the stairs turned around and shouted back to the two strollers behind, "Hey, are you two coming anytime soon, or would you rather stay outside until it gets dark?"

At that remark, Will and Dean looked at each other and thought something similar around the lines; " _I wonder if it will be darker inside than outside by that time…_ " Nevertheless, they both started jogging up the stairs to where Susan waited. Dean pulled out a key from his pocket and opened one of the huge doors.

Will was disappointed, the outside had looked much like a fairytale building, but the inside had the unmistakable marks of a rundown modern institution. What had once been a grand hall with great space and two stairs on each side of the room leading up to the floors above, had been transformed into a reception ninety sixty/seventy style. At the far side of the hall, situated between the two stairs was a reception desk packed with old papers, office stuff and a dusty old black telephone. On each side of the hall, right before the bottom of the stairs were passages leading into the right and left wing. From the lofty ceiling above hung a huge iron lamp with twelve arms. Funny enough, Will thought, the old paintings of some of the monks were still hanging on the walls together with some saints that were unknown to her. The one above the desk was especially creepy, the searching eyes of a long dead monk stared at her no matter where in the room she was standing, as if it was wanting to tell her there were no place to hide. When she finally was able to tear her own eyes from the picture, she could see that everything in the room was covered in a thick layer of dust, and several places, the wallpaper hung from the wall. Her parents must have had a similar thought, because she could see glimpse of disappointment in their eyes. Dean was the first to speak what they all thought.

"I must confess that I thought when someone had been living here, they would have taken better care of this place. At least kept the entrance in a better shape."

"You can say that again," said Will, "where do you think your aunt lived? We could spend the entire night here just looking for the right room. And to be honest, this place looks creepy, and it will be even worse when the sun goes down."

Susan answered back with a skeptical voice to her daughter, "Don't tell me you are afraid of ghosts Will, you are too old for that nonsense."

"Of course not" Will said, but wasn't entirely convinced. She had already met other supernatural beings on earth, albeit most of them in one way or another came from other worlds. Most of them were usually too afraid of humans to let themselves be known, but not always. However, even if the place looked a bit spooky, there was probably nothing to be scared of; it was just an old house with a silly story attached to it, made up by angry people who lost their job when the place was shut down. It wasn't that everything she bumped into had to be related to her double life. They were only going to sleep her for one night, look at this place, most probably turn down the testament and drive back home for eight long and boring hours. This time it was Dean who spoke.

"Alright guys, let us find a place to sleep for tonight, and maybe a toilet that still works. I rather not travel back to the village each time nature calls..."

After that, they went to have a quick exploration. It didn't take long before they found the recently deceased's old living quarters. It turned out the reception had a simple map attached to the wall, stating where the patients had their rooms and where the staff had theirs. The entire right wing on the first floor belonged to the staff. It had a kitchen, a laundry, a living room, bedrooms and other sort of rooms for those who didn't reside in the village.

As they walked through the wing, everything was much cleaner and more tidy than what they got from their first impression in the reception. They first passed the laundry room on their left side, thereby followed by the kitchen. After that was the living room, which didn't have any doors, it was just a big space in the wing with some book cases stuffed with medical books, some chairs, a large sofa and an old TV. Will was sure she could make it "work" later, she just had to be careful so neither Susan nor her stepfather realized how she did it.

The entire time they had the windows on their right side. Then they came to the bedrooms, there were several of them like pearls on a string along the corridor, all of them had an ugly dark brown shade and came likely from the ninety-fifties or -sixties. The guardian opened some doors and looked inside a couple of them. Each bedroom had similar interior; a bed with a commode and a closet on the opposite wall, facing the bed. On the right side of the bed was a window, facing the open space behind the old monastery. Will walked inside and looked out the window. There, under the darkening sky was an old overgrown garden with wild bushes and century old fruit trees, their trunks twisted in pain while the naked branches stretched skywards like skeleton fingers in a silent prayer. A wind suddenly came and took hold of the winter dead garden. It made everything move like every bush and tree was alive. Cornelia with her earth magic would have brought it back to its former glory in no time thought Will to herself, and didn't realize something silently walked up behind her.

"That must have been a nice garden once."

Will jumped high in fear and spun quickly around ready to attack whatever it was, but luckily, she held back. "MOM, don't frighten me like that!" Will shouted. Her mother jerked back a little, surprised at her daughters outburst but didn't comment it.

"Perhaps you would like to sleep here tonight, Dean and I are going to take the room next to this," Susan said.

The redhead calmed herself a little and gave her mother a reply, "Ok mom, is William going to sleep with you or with me tonight?"

Susan watched the teenager and said, "I think he can sleep with you, you always seem to be the best of us to keep him calm during the nights. Besides, he can help you keep your thoughts away from whatever you might have been thinking about right now."

"What!" said Will.

"The way you reacted when I came up behind you tells me you are letting your fantasy running away with yourself."

Will let out a sight and looked down, "I guess you are right, I let my imagination running wild. I will go back to the car and get our stuff. Do you think you can fix my bed while I do that?" Her mother smiled to her and gave a nod before she walked out of the room. Just before she was going to leave the room herself, Will felt a shiver charge down her spine like an electric shock! She hastily took a glance back at the cold window, and there out in the old garden she thought she saw a shadow that moved. Will froze to the floor where she was standing and looked again. Nothing. " _Will get a grip on yourself_ ," she thought, " _the next thing that will scare you will probably be your own shadow. The worst thing out there would probably be an owl that would attack you if you came too close. Besides, you are a guardian for heaven's sake, what could possibly be worse than things you already have met?"_

But when you are alone, things tend to get much worse than when you are not, and fear double as the courage shrink away in the dark…


	3. Chapter 3

**Diclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

Outside the sun had set, and the last light from it mad the sky in the west glow in a dim dying light while the first stars appeared on the eastern part of the dark heaven. The trip to the car went without incidents, but the looming shadows of the forest and the overwhelming feeling of a thousand unseen eyes looking at her, made Will almost want to run back inside.

Luckily, the electricity in the old asylum was still working, because right after she slammed the car door, some lights went inside the institute, and from one of the windows she could see her mother wave her hands happily to her. Will waved somewhat reluctant back. As she went up the twenty or so stairs to the great wooden doors, she casted a quick glance over her shoulder. Now, as there were lights coming out from the inside, the surrounding forest turned even darker than before, and the cold wind made it impossible to determine if the moving shadows came from branches shivering in the wind, or something else... Suddenly she heard a sound piercing the night.

" _ **Hoo-hoo**_ ".

The guardian felt her hair rose on her neck. She turned to the door, and without thinking, she used her superhuman guardian power to force the door open with such speed and strength that it were almost torn off the hinges and ran inside. " _Damn_ " Will screamed in her mind, " _I let myself be scared of an owl._ _I should be more careful, the last thing I need is to explain why a perfectly solid door suddenly fell off_." The teenage girl casted a quick glance at the still functional hinges and closed the door carefully after her. The reception hall was completely silent in the dark, the only light came from the passage leading to the wing were they would be sleeping tonight. The tiny light made the few furniture in the hall cast dark shadows. The passage to the left wing and the doors at the top of the stairs were pitch black, a sudden and unwelcome soft single, _thud_ , from top of one of the stairs made her rush back to her family not wishing to stay in the hall for a moment longer than necessary.

Back with Susan and Dean she found the lights on in the corridor. Dean greeted her and took the suitcase and two bags containing their few necessaries needed for their little trip. Her mother wasn't finish yet making their bedrooms ready, so Will sat down on the sofa while Dean took their luggage to the bedrooms. Will seized the opportunity to see if the TV still was functional without her special aid. She plugged in the outlet and tried to turn on the old television. Channel one: Fog! Channel two: Snow! Channel three: More snow. Channel four: Black! Will went up closely to the old apparatus and whispered to it,

"Hi, my name is Will, who are you Mr.?"

There was a short buzzling sound before a metallic voice answered back, "It is Miss. My name is Annett miss Will."

"Oh, sorry," Will whispered back, "do you think you can keep your voice low so my parents don't hear you?"

"Of course," Annett said.

"Is there any show on the air tonight?" Will asked hopefully.

"No, I am afraid not. My cable connecting to the antenna is broken off, and it have been so for many years."

"What" said Will, genuinely surprised, "you mean Dean's aunt didn't watch TV?"

"No, nobody has been watching me since the rest of the staff moved out, and not long after that the cable broke one night. I have no idea how it happened, but Ms. Betty never sought to have it repaired."

"Ms. Betty?" The teenage witch said.

"Ms. Betty was the elderly woman who lived her after rest of the people here moved out. For a while at least, but the old boss lived here too. However, he disappeared shortly after the asylum closed, and as far I know, he was last seen while he was looking for something in the basement, but no one ever saw him coming up again. Perhaps he wanted to run away in all silence, after all he had just lost his job and maybe wanted to start a new. I mean, with so many of his patients disappearing without a trace, who would employ him?"

"Will are you talking to yourself?"

Will froze up when she heard her mother's voice, but luckily, she was still out in the corridor and hadn't seen her yet.

"No mom, I am just fixing the TV!" Will shouted back with a nervous voice. She put her index finger on her lip to signalize to Annett that she had to be quiet, then she snapped her fingers and _voila_ , the TV screen turned to life with whatever was on channel four, just before Susan came around the corner and looked at her. Will smiled and waved her hand lightly to greet her mother, "Guess we are lucky tonight, there is a documentary about whales on channel four right now."

"So the old TV is still working I see, I hadn't really expected that." Susan said smiling back to her daughter. "Hey, Dean!" Her husband however, was unpacking their luggage and responded only with an unintelligible answer.

"Will have fixed the TV, do you want to watch whales before we call it for a night?"

There came a positive reply from a bedroom a little further down the corridor.

"Hey Will, it seemed that we truly had to travel all the way out here to be able to have some family time together." Her mother said happily and sat down on the dusty sofa witch complained under her after being out of use for some time. Will on the other side, cursed to herself that the TV could not continue her story for now. The doubt she had about her own sanity was set aside for the moment being; something had happened her, and Will knew she had to learn more about it so that she could protect her family if something occurred.

The rest of the evening was calm, everybody as far as William, enjoyed the documentary. Will had rushed to hide the broken TV cable under a carpet when her mother's attention had turned elsewhere for a short moment. Dean had magically conjured a bag of chips, something that made Will's mood brighten. They talked to each other about trivial matter and looked for programs on the other channels when the documentary was over. In the end, they had found a movie that Will was certain usually only was able via cable TV. Susan however didn't like the movie so much, so instead she started to talk to Dean.

"So what do you think about this place so far?"

Dean gave his reply, "I am not sure yet. I don't want to move all the way out here if that is what you think. If we are going to keep this place and do something with it, that would mean we will have to pay an awfully lot in taxes, and the place is in serious need for a restauration from the little I have seen so far. My thought is to have a good look at the entire estate in the morning to see how the rest is. It has a great potential for someone who would like to turn it into a hotel. If I say yes to the lawyer, it's only so we can sell it to some others. Just look at the surroundings, endless forests and mountains close by is rather attractive for developers, not to mention the old building itself can take many guests. The people in the village would certainly be happy if somebody came and restored this place, it would provide jobs for many of them."

"I wouldn't bet on the last one," said Will, taking her attention away from the movie, "The guy we spoke with in the village seemed less than thrilled about the thought of other people staying here. How do you think tourism would be if the guests suddenly started to disappear?"

Her mother turned to her, "Will my dear, don't go around believing such stories, if we look at the papers the lawyer brings with him tomorrow, I am confident that they will give an entirely other story about why this place was closed."

Dean became quiet after what his stepdaughter said, so Susan turned to look at him. "Don't tell me you believed in that silly ghost story too," she said disbelieving, "Really, am I surrounded by superstitious children?"

"No no," her husband answered quickly, "But the house is old and should be met with an open mind. There must be hundreds of stories in its many walls. From the silent prayers of the first monks to the poor people who had a different reason for coming here in later years. Some stories are known, some are hidden, some are true, other lies, put together they give the house a soul and make the place feeling more alive."

The last statement made Will lose all confidence she had built up during the movie. Her thoughts went back to what the suspicious people at the Inn had said and the way they suddenly had reacted, the old man's tale, and that the TV indirectly had confirmed what he said later. Something was amiss about this place.

Her brother had fallen asleep by the time the movie ended, and the rest of them also felt ready for bed, but Will had decided to sneak out a little while later and talk some more with the TV.

"Ahem," Dean cleared his throat, "Did anybody see where the toilet was?" They all stared at each other.

"Will maybe you can look for the bathroom while I and Dean put William to bed, so can you come back and tell us where it is," her mother suggested.

"Yes mom" came the somewhat reluctant answer from Will, and she walked out to the corridor.

"Let's see," Will thought to herself, "This wing was restricted to the staff, so I am sure there should be a toilet or a bathroom here too. From the hall to here I have passed the laundry room, the kitchen and here is the living room, further on are some small storage rooms and unknown numbers of bedrooms, so I guess it must come after the bedrooms then."

With that in mind, she walked further in to the long corridor, grabbing her toothbrush on her way while she thanked the heavens beyond Kandrakar that the lights were on in the corridor. She walked straight forward and opened doors after doors with dark bedrooms and storages until she came to the end of the corridor were the lights stopped. There, the corridor made a ninety-degree angle to the left and continued even further inn to the dark.

Luckily, the last door she opened had a bathroom inside. She turned on the lights. It was clear that the old woman had used it because it still contained shampoo, toothpaste and other personal things that was relatively new. She opened the tap and found the water flowing, albeit there was no warm water coming out. Will brushed her teeth, spit out the foam and let the water flush it down the sink. The sound of water flowing down the tubes was painfully long and scary, the sound of running water seemed never to stop on its way deep under the house. When it finally did, Will was already finished with washing her hands. Back outside in the corridor everything was deadly silent. The redhead stood still for a moment before she walked forward to have a peek at the dark corridor around the corner.

" _Wonder what's at the end of this_ " Will thought, " _and why the lights didn't come on, maybe there is another switch for the lights here._ "

Will looked behind her to see if her mom or stepdad was coming. Neither of them did. She made a wave with her hand towards the lightbulbs on the ceiling and the lights turned on immediately. The rest of the corridor was similar to the one she came from, with more doors on the left side and windows on the right side, facing the dense forest on the outside. At the far end of the corridor, she could see a door with a sign above it; _Stairway_ , it said. Seeing there was nothing more, Will waved her hand again and the lights went out. She walked quickly back to her parents and told them where to find the bathroom, then she walked to her own room, finding William fast asleep in her own bed. After taking off her clothes and shifting into her pyjamas, she went to bed beside her little brother.

However, after both Dean and Susan had been into her room and said their goodnights, she didn't fell asleep, but waited a while until she was sure everybody else was sleeping before she snuck out of bed and back to the TV. Carefully not to wake her little brother who slept beside her. This time the corridor leading from their bedrooms was so dark that she couldn't see the end of it, and no lights came in from the windows. In the dark it is not the absent of lights that scares you, it is what you believe might come forth, which you fear. And the way to the living room felt way longer without lights.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hi, then it is time for a new chapter. I am trying to create a build up for this story and not rush it forwards, after all, it is not what you see that scares you, it is what you don't see...  
** **I hope you will make more some reviews and tell me how I am doing so far, and thank you to you who already have.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

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The corridor was eerily empty and shrouded in darkness when she peeked out. She tip-toed silently through the door and closed it behind her as soundless as she could, not wanting to wake up her little brother. But in her mind, the little click the door made when it was shut, sounded like thunder through the hallway, disturbing the quiet night. Will looked around, holding her breath, " _Please,_ " she thought, " _Don't let there be anyone, or anything, out there."_

With that unpleasant thought in mind, she started walking. The wooden floorboards creaked as she went, but like a ghostly echo, seconds after she trod on them. On the outside, a wind suddenly swept through the old forest and a dark fog seeped out from between the trees. Bringing shadows and whispers from unknown creatures out from their hidings.

After a painfully long walk, Will finally found herself in the dark living room. She came barefooted and only in her pyjamas and regretted it. The temperature was freezing, and the fact that it was almost winter didn't help, but if she wanted to know more she had to deal with it. Therefor she squat down in front of the TV and talked to Annett, as it had called itself. First, it was only sounds of statics coming out from her, but suddenly she started to talk.

"Hello Ms. Will, what brings you back? Should you not be asleep by now?"

Will wanted to be politely interested, said, "Yes I should, but I couldn't sleep, I kept thinking about this man that suddenly disappeared without any obvious reason. I was wondering, not only him, but also if you knew something more about the patients and the old lady who lived her?"

"Would that knowledge help you sleep better?" Annett asked doubtfully, but then she said, "If you insist then."

The TV cleared it's nonexistent throat and continued. "I came her as a brand new television in 1984, which was just two years before this enterprise closed. There was a lot of talking, eight people had vanished the last three years, and the staff were already talking about how uncertain their job was if it continued like that. The boss however, Mr. Henderson, didn't want anyone to talk about what had happened, so he hit hard down on anyone who was talking, so the staff didn't dare to say much in fear of losing their jobs. I think the only one to support his policy was Ms. Betty."

"What sort of people were Mr. Henderson and Ms. Betty then?" asked Will. "Oh, they were both very private and secretive and didn't speak to other people if not necessary. However, I heard from the staff that Ms. Betty often went to meet Mr. Henderson and they both could be away for a long time together. There was some talk about an "unprofessional" relationship between them, but I tell you, neither of them was the sort of person who could see anyone as friends. What happened between them, if anything at all, happened in secret, and had probably little or nothing to do with friendship. It was always Mr. Henderson who went out first, then Ms. Betty followed soon after, they were very discrete, it was obvious they didn't want to alert anyone like that. But you know, people do have a brain and use it sometimes too. I heard the staff whispering among themselves that the people who disappeared usually went missing not long after Mr. Henderson came back, so they thought it might have been a connection."

"For real?" said Will, "The two of them disappeared together sometimes, out for business that probably had nothing to do with their work. And when they came back, somebody would disappear? How long did this go on and where did they go?"

"As I told", Annett said with her metallic voice;" I came to be here only the last two years, and the staff was already talking about it, so it must have been going on for some time. I am sorry to tell you I can't say for how long this was going on, but four more people vanished before it closed down."

"So I guess that will be a mystery for now," Will said, mostly for herself, and Annett continued "But about the matter of where they went, I know there was some talk about them being observed coming up from the basement, never together, but first one of them and then the other always came a little later. I heard they also had been seen visiting the forest, but that was before I came so I can't tell you more."

"Do you think" Will said, "Did those two's strange relationship and mysterious little "trips" have anything with the disappearing patients to do? And what happened to the people who vanished? People don't suddenly disappear or…" more she didn't say, because she did disappear on an unregularly basis herself she realized, and nobody beside her fellow guardians and her boyfriend Matt knew where. "Well, at least, they are usually found again sometime later, in various conditions..."

"I really don't know." Said Annett and didn't have much more to say after that. The staff had been careful not to speak too much when they were in the living room. Betty's room used to be where Dean and Susan slept now, and Henderson had slept in his own room next to his office located on the third floor right above the main entrance. That would be a place for a closer inspection tomorrow when she could have a look under the excuse of exploring the house.

Will stood up and walked out of the living room. She had just stepped out in the dark corridor when a cold wind suddenly got a hold on her naked ankles and she started to shiver. Outside she could hear the late autumn wind howl, black old trees screaked when they bended and twisted in time with the wind's eerie symphony. She could feel it getting colder; it had to be a broken window somewhere. Will started to walk back to her bedroom in a slow hurry, not wanting to be alone in this cold and creepy hallway longer than necessary.

After what felt like an eternity, she came to the door leading into her room. She took hold of the doorknob, but didn't open it as a strange feeling held her back. Will suddenly felt herself being watched. Frightful, she turned her head slowly to the left to look back at the direction from where she came, nothing there. Then she turned her head again to the right and stared into the dark, which led further inn to the building, nothing there. Nothing there.

The frightened teenager stood completely frozen in front of her door, pondering on her choices on what to do. On one side, behind the door was the safety of her bed. She could put up a tiny magical shield in her room that would alert her if somebody tried to sneak in while she and William slept. She could probably do that to her parents' room too without them noticing it. On the other hand, she could follow the hallway into the unknown and look for the source of her uneasiness. Will weighted her options before she finally thought, _"I can't believe I am really going to do this._ "

She looked back into the dark that led away from the bedrooms and further into the building where she knew the bathroom was, and the stairs, leading her to whatever lay beyond. With every fiber in her body warning her not to go, the girl in pyjamas started to walk slowly further into the night. Each time she passed a door, she kept a close eye on it in case it suddenly should open. And when it didn't, she wondered what it could be that could be spying on her through the keyholes, or was it something that followed her through the windows on the outside? Will stopped for a moment to look outside, but not being in her enchanted guardian form, there wasn't much she could see, and since she couldn't see, she tried to listen. The stillness of the house was oppressive, as if a dark cloud had descended over the building, suffocating every sound you might have expected to hear, even the wind she had heard earlier was gone. She walked to the end of the corridor witch made up the front of the building, then it turned with a ninety-degree angle to the left. So far, she hadn't dared to create any sort of magical light in case Susan or Dean for some reason should happened to open their door, however, as fast as she rounded the corner she stretched out her right arm and opened her palm where an electrical blue light appeared. Of course, had it been Taranee, a warm yellowish bright flame would have appeared, but her element being energy, aka electricity, the flame was a cold blue-white one that made the illuminated part of the corridor appear in an unnatural pale light. The presence of light made Will feel a little braver, but for some reason, she couldn't make the light bright enough to light up more than her immediate surroundings. The lone witch carried on anyway.

The corridor felt endless, and every time the old floor moaned under her feet, it sounded like thunder to her ears, she was afraid of what could lie behind each of the doors she passed. Could she have woken anything that slept? After what must been an eternity she stood in front of the door at the end of the hallway.

"Stairway" a sign said next to it. The door was quite different to the others she had passed. It was probably an original door from the time this was a monastery. The door was of solid oak, broader than the other doors, probably to allow bigger objects to be moved up and down. As she stood in front of the door, Will felt completely numb, as if the time itself had stopped and all that existed in the world was her and this door leading to the dark unknown. Almost by itself, her free arm rose and clenched around the doorknob, and there she stood, terrified with tears in her eyes, imagining what could lurk behind the door. She embraced herself and let her magic flow through her body, ready to attack whatever might come, clenched hard around the doorknob and turned it around….

Dean was a light sleeper; long after Susan had fallen asleep, he was still awake and listened to the sounds of the house. The sudden wind outside made it creak in every loose part, the trees in the garden right behind them didn't help it either. For a while, he thought he also heard silent voices, more like whispers, and he couldn't stop himself thinking of what the old man at the Inn had said about voices being heard up here. It was a soft voice, perhaps a feminine one, and it was a harsher metallic one. Mad people who just had vanished and never been found, sure it must had been an urban tale, in the middle of the forest… How he wished he could be so calm as his wife, nothing ever seemed to scare her. He felt cold, so very cold in his bed, and started to regret coming here in the first place. His wife had found this trip to be a perfect opportunity for them all to be together for a little while, especially for Will whose friends always seemed to come first. He would had preferred a lunch in the park and a trip to the cinema, if it existed a movie that all of them could enjoy together. Dean found himself holding his breath, he didn't hear voices anymore, sure it must had been his imagination. Then suddenly he thought he heard footsteps! They were very soft, and he wouldn't be attentive to them if it hadn't been for the occasional creaks from the floor. They came closer and closer, and suddenly they stopped. Dean didn't dare to breathe, then he heard the footsteps again, now they passed the door and continued further away along the corridor outside. Will's stepdad didn't sleep well that night.

…The door wouldn't move, it was locked. Will felt a rush of relief through her body, whatever might be behind the door was shut away. At least for now. Better coming back in the morning when it was light outside. She looked at the door for a moment before she turned away and went back the way she came. Will opened the door to her room silently and saw her little brother sleeping peacefully on their bed were she hurried to join him.

Sleep didn't come easy. She tossed and turned for a long time. When she finally fell asleep she didn't know, but in the realm of dreams she soon found herself walking through a dark house, followed by shadows of unseen creatures that always would disappear when she turned around to look. However, the next morning she would not recall this.

Unknown to the sleeping Will, at the end of the corridor, the doorknob she had found locked started to turn around by itself, followed by a soft sound, "Click", and the door was not locked anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hello again, new chapter up and things are silently happening in the shadows, what will the new morning bring? As usual, reviews are welcome.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

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The next day was the day for exploration. After a breakfast made up of already prepared sandwiches and some special food for William, they all sat down and discussed what they should look at first.

"I suggest we start at the top first, and then we will look through it downwards, one floor at the time," Susan said.

"Sounds fine to me," Dean answered back, "And I think we all should have a look together, by doing that we can comment the state of the rooms to each other so that we don't risk missing anything. Then we can also have a talk about what we are going to do with this place, perhaps someone get a good idea," he hopefully continued.

Susan looked at him, and then at Will, "Would that be alright for you, or do you prefer to have a look on your own?"

"It's ok mom, I will come with you, but if I see something interesting I keep the right to have a look at my own."

"That's fine," Susan said, "Just don't touch or destroy anything, remember we don't really own this place. That would only be if Dean decide to accept the testament."

" _Something I am not quite sure of right now_ " thought the history teacher silently for himself while thinking back to last night.

"When will the lawyer come?" asked Will.

Dean picked up his letter from a pocked and red through it, "He wrote that he would arrive around four of clock," he said. "When I spoke to him over the phone, it sounded like he lived quite far away from here too so we have to be patient."

"Everywhere is far away from here" said Will, "And I do not mean that in relative terms, but four o'clock? It took us eight hours to drive all the way here. Even if we have the answer ready when he comes, we will not be home before midnight and only if we drive nonstop. It will be bad enough for us, but what about poor William?"

Dean had already foreseen that little problem so he said, "I thought we could stop and spend a night at a hotel along the road. It would be nice having a warm dinner, breakfast and a soft bed, that way we could take our time on our trip back home the next day. Perhaps we can have a few more stops along the road so William don't make it " _The Road to Hell"_ for us again _,_ " and merry referred to the song _The Road to Hell_ that ironically had showed up on the radio at a time when his biological child had started to cry.

"So you didn't think the bed we slept in tonight was good enough _?_ " Susan said with a sly smile to her husband.

Will just wanted to stick her fingers deep in her ears and pretend as if she didn't hear that, but now it was too late. Susan snickered at her daughter's expression and wondered if she should continue and embarrass her further, but decided she did not want to take the risk. "Alright then _,_ " said Susan, "Shall we go? Will can you take William with you?"

"Yes mom," said Will and lifted her brother up such that his main part of his body rested against her chest while his head looked over her shoulder. " _That way you can watch my back_ ," Will thought to William, but even if the guardian had used her telepathic ability to speak to him, he probably wouldn't have cared much for it, he was too young.

They went back into the entrance hall where the reception and the stairs was. On the outside, a layer of clouds had replaced the bright sunny weather from yesterday, promising either snow or rain. There was still some wind blowing, but not as much as during the night, but on the inside, this didn't matter. They walked up the stairs to the third floor; the wall along the stairs were decorated with paintings of old monks and some black and white photos of the village further down. Will thought she could recognize most of the houses she had seen on their drive through there yesterday. When they reached the top of the stairs, they had to walk around the gallery to reach the part were the corridor to the left and right wing began. Unlike the first floor, up here the windows from the corridor pointed out towards the garden on the backside of the building while the rooms faced the road and parking lot.

The first room they came to was the unmistakable office belonging to the head of the institute. When Dean opened the door the first thing they saw was a huge and beautiful office desk made of dark mahogany. It had elaborate carvings and decorations on the front creating a symbol that must have belonged to the old monastery. Behind it was a big mahogany chair with dark green cushions. The walls to the left and right were covered in books, magazines and papers from the ceiling to the floor. On each side of the room behind the desk was two big windows from where Will could see their car, and in the middle between those windows was a big portrait. It was a grim man in white doctor clothes and a stern look on his face. It was also painted in a way that made his eyes follow you wherever you stood, just like the painting at the reception and Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," but unlike her, this was a person you would prefer not to be seen by.

" _That must be Mr. Henderson_ ," mumbled Will, Susan looked first at Will as if she heard what she said, then she walked to the painting and read the tiny inscription under it.

"Doctor Fritz A. Henderson," she said.

"Must be the old boss here," commented Dean beside Will, both of them still standing in the doorway.

Susan stared at the painting for a little while before she took a glance out the window. The ground was littered with dead leafs and a twigs. "Shall we proceed?"

"Ok" said Dean.

"Can I stay here for a little while and have a better look? I promise to catch up with you in a moment," Will asked.

Susan eyed the redhead suspiciously for a moment, but eventually gave away. "Alright Will, but not too long, and don't destroy anything."

"Don't worry, I promise I won't" Will said and smiled back at her, "William will stay here with me and make sure I behave. If not, I am sure he will blab about it."

Susan and Dean walked out the door to have a look at the other rooms. As they passed her, Dean said to Will "I am sure if you should find a book or anything you think is interesting here, you can take it with you and read it. There are so many books here, and I doubt anyone would miss one or two."

"Thanks" Will said back, and was happy that her stepfather unaware had provided her with a legal excuse to take something with her if she found something suspicious.

Will followed her parents to the door and watched them disappear into another room, then she hurried to close the door after her. "Alright Will," she said loudly to herself, "Now you are alone in his office where only your brother and a creepy looking man on a painting can see you. Time to get some work done!"

She sat William down on the floor and went straight to the mahogany desk. On top of it lay several papers that Will after a quick look understood was electricity and food bills. The very recently date on each of them told Will that the old woman must have used this office as her own until she died. None of the bills were interesting so she proceeded further down to the drawers. She pulled them out and took out everything she could find inside and looked through it in a hurry. Medical journals, old bills, some magazines, pencils, tape, glue etc. nothing of interest. There were two lockers on each side under the desk, she opened them and pulled out a mountain of papers.

Suddenly something among the papers caught her interests. Some old clips from a local newspaper contained writings about the missing patients. There was a clip telling about the disappearance of a patient, which apparently had happened in 1974 according to the date of the newspaper. It was thought to believe the patient had escaped to the forest or the nearby mountains, some of the staff and the local police had gone looking, but found nothing.

The next paper showed the same thing happened with two patients within a span of one week two years later, and so it went on. Each time it happened, no one was found, no clue or sign of why, and in a clip dated to the summer of 1985 (the last one before the asylum closed) the journalist found it strange that all the escaped patients had been so successful to get away without getting spotted or leave a single trace. In the finale newspaper it was written about the closing of the asylum and the investigation that was opened against Mr. Henderson, there was some speculation about illegal organ trafficking, but no final conclusion. Will went to one of the huge bookcases at the wall and started fumbling through it, she took out books and papers, red the titles, threw it away and continued to the next one. After doing this brutal elimination, she came to some thick old books. The guardian took them out with more care than she had done with the other books and looked through them. They dated from the foundation of the monastery in 1865 to the closing in 1915 and were written in an annalistic way. Will opened the oldest one and started to read.

 _1 Aug. 1865_

 _The Monastery of St. George is open for all those seeking to devote their life to prayer and devotion to God our Lord and Jesus Christ Our Savior. We have built our sacred foundation on old heathen ground in order to seek to strengthen our cause to spread light to where darkness laid, hope to where hopelessness was and knowledge where ignorance once prevailed. Our greatest thanks and prayers goes to Judge Justin Credible who granted us this land, Billy O' Near, Ben Dover and the Honorable Bea Goode who are our most generous benefactors.  
The building of our Monastery have proceeded well, the front and west wing is complete. There we will have our kitchen, diner hall, library and studies together with room for novices when that time comes. The right wing will when finished, house most of our brothers, but for the time being we will all stay in the west wing. So far, 168 devoted souls have told they want to reside here and devote their life to God. However, when everything is ready there will be room for 200 so we can welcome 32 more.  
The ground of which The Monastery of St. Georges is built upon is old Indian land, but since the spread of civilization to this continent, these have been driven away and their old practice have been stopped. Some old Dutch hunters I met the previous day told me the natives of old, the Thom-ha-Hawk Indians once believe a terrible creature used to lurk in this mountains. In their legends, it had been killed by their hero and buried somewhere around here, later they made annual animal sacrifices to ease this supposedly evil spirit. However, soon will old superstition make way for the light of Jesus Christ and the new age of man. The Brothers in the Monastery of St. Georges will be at our Lord's service doing so.  
The size of our land stretch from the Nopa River a little further down and up to…_

Will stopped there and red the last part again. " _An evil creature! Spirit! Buried!_ " Will thought. For most human beings, belief in such things didn't make sense in the modern age, but Will had seen too much to brush it of as just an overactive imagination. Not to mention when she encountered those herself, did she count as human while she was a guardian, with wings and powers at her disposal far beyond the reach of most other creatures. She hurried to read further, but neither the monster nor the old tribe or legend was mentioned again. The scribe only mention a little bit of everything regarding the newly opened monastery, and thereby the opening section was by far the longest passage. August went into September, which made way for October and November. The year passed and no mention of anything special or unusual, just the slow progress of the work related to the house. The years went on, and Will hurried through the pages, once and every then someone were punished for sleeping during mass, but nothing that caught her interest. It was a luck that whoever wrote this had such a nice handwriting that made it possible to see immediately what had been written. She finished the first book and went on with the next one.

Finally, in the autumn of 1869, a year after entire building had been completed there seemed to be something more.

 _15 Oct. 1869_

 _One of our monks have gone missing, brother John Addams. He disappeared yesterday without telling anyone, we thought he might have gone for a walk in the forest because all of his personal belongings were still in his room. However, he was not back when night came. His roommate and two of his friends went into the forest to look for him after morning mass today, but they hadn't found him by the time they came back to evening mass. If he is not back until tomorrow, we will have to ask some of the huntsmen around here for help looking. The other monks believe he might have gone to the forest and perhaps wandered too far away and got lost there or in the mountains.  
Brother McKinley fell asleep during morning mass again!_

16 Oct. 1869

 _Today we contacted two huntsmen, a Mr. van Vaahl and Mr. Leoven. Five brothers have volunteered to go with them and learn more about the area around here. Thank our Lord for the beautiful weather he has given us lately, it will help those who are out looking and poor brother Addams if he is there.  
Brother McKinley was found asleep after mass today._

The next days did only list up the daily cores and doings, including McKinley who was found to be asleep quite often, but it seemed to be tolerated to a certain degree because he was by far the oldest of them. Will continued, after two weeks both the monks and the hunters had come back with no results. He was later declared dead _in absentia_ because no dead body ever was found, nor had he been observed on nearby farms or towns that were more distant. She was just to pick out another book when she begun hear the voices of Susan and Dean coming from the corridor. Will turned around and found the room was a mess. She had thrown books, papers and magazines all around herself, and in the middle of the room sat her little brother and played some loose photos in black and white.

With a quick move, she was in front of the office door, opened it and looked outside. Dean and Susan was walking towards her, speaking to each other, they must have looked through all the rooms in that part already. If Susan should happened to see the mess she had made she would be grounded for sure, and that before she even came home! Will closed the door fast behind her and looked with horror at the room. She would never be able to pick up the papers and put the books back in the bookshelves in time, how could she never learn! Thank God she knew exactly what to do in a situation like this. With her back pushing against the door in case her parents should try to open it, she lifted her hands and let her magic do the work. Her own levitation power on objects didn't came close to Cornelia's mighty telekinetic powers, or Hay Lin's ability to manipulate the air, but sure she could clean up a room with a wave with her hand. Papers, pencils, books thick and thin, scissors and everything astray flew right back to its original position. Her brother watched everything in utter fascination and commented it colorfully. The entire séance took three seconds and Will was happy with herself. Now she could hear Susan speak, and she was almost outside the room so Will went to William in two long steps and picked him up. He was still happily toying with the old photographs so Will gently took them from him and lifted him up in her arms. The doorknob turned and the door opened, reviling the face of her mother. Will managed to hide the photographs behind her back just in time.

"No drama in the office I presume?" Susan said with a hint of humor in her voice to her daughter.

"Ah, nothing to be afraid of yet mom, I don't think life in office suite me well. I cannot for the life of it understand how you can sit in a dusty office the entire day on job. Although, it could be tempting if I had a desk and chair like this. That would be king!" said Will and looked at the great mahogany desk.

Her mother replied, "Don't be too sure yet miss, maybe one day you will find the peaceful life behind a desk to be the best thing in the world."

"There are days," Will said back to her mother, "When you come home late in the evening complaining how stressful it is, and that you sometimes wish you had an even more peaceful job, are you sure?"

Susan smiled and said, "Not every day can be perfect, but I really do like my job. Whatever your choice will be in time, I hope you find one that you will come to enjoy, even if it feels hard sometimes."

"I will try looking for one," Will said.

Susan went back to the corridor, "Are you coming?"

"Yes," said Will, "I will just grab a book I want to look through _._ " She stuffed the pictures in her pocket and went to the bookshelf and picked out the three remaining annals she hadn't read yet and were about to put them under her arm when an unknown force made her stop. Will slowly put her hand back into her pocket and took out the three pictures William had found and looked at them, and what she saw made her very soul freeze.


	6. Chapter 6

**Hi again, time for a new chapter. As always, reviews are welcome, I would realy like to know what you think about the story so far as there are still more to come.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

Will joined her parents just a moment later and Susan was surprised to see her daughter carry with her three thick leathery old books.

"What are those?" Susan said.

"Books," said Will.

"That I could already tell," snorted Susan, "but what kind of books?"

"Annals from the time this was a monastery, they were continuously written until it closed," said Will.

"Annals?" Susan was at loss.

"Annals," said Dean and started to give them a lecture (being in his natural element), "are a form of historical representation which record events, chronologically, year by year. Unlike chronicles, they don't organize events by topics, nor do the tie up knots and conclude like a history books does. I must say, I didn't knew it was that sort of books you would like to look at." He said and looked curiously at Will. But Will didn't say anything or looked at him, she only stared at the corridor in front of her with tight lips and a strange look on her face. Dean was surprised by this, he had almost expected her to complaining at him giving her a history lecture outside school. Instead she seemed to be in deep thoughts, and that look on her face, he would have sworn it was nervousness, but why should it be that? "Is there something wrong Will?" He said.

"What! No." Will answered back a little too fast and put on a very fake grin on her face and smiled back at him. "Why should anything be wrong?" She continued.

Dean eyed her again curious, but said, "Nothing, I just thought it was something because you suddenly become so serious, you didn't see any ghosts in there, did you," he said teasingly.

Will paled, and her obvious fake grin became even worse. "No-no," she said and tried to laugh it off, but only a highly strained sound came out of her throat. "There is no such things as ghosts, right mom?" Will said and looked at her mother as to emphasize the last comment.

"Of course not," Susan said to her teenage girl. "Will you do look sort of pale, do you want to walk outside and take in some fresh air?"

"No, it's alright mom. I will follow you through the rest of the rooms and have a look," said Will. Not wanting to leave them alone (or herself) for a while.

As it turned out, the rooms they walked into were similar to each other; some were only a bit bigger than the other, most of them was either rooms for patients, storage rooms with outdated medical equipment or had served some unknown function. But the more she looked at them, the more Will thought of them as dried up mummies. Aside from the office and the master bedroom, every room were covered in a thick layer of undisturbed dust, and from the walls and ceilings, plaster and tapestry had begun to fall off. Occasionally, some beds or expensive equipment were hidden under white blankets. Her mom and Dean even made a remarked about the strangely dry air inside. They finished the third floor without finding anything special and went on to have a look at the second floor. More rooms for patients and more room for their treatment, and every single room were filled with the ugliest furniture the post-modern society had created.

At one point, Will and her family came to a narrow door that was tightly squeezed in between two normal sized doors.

"What do you think is in there? "Dean asked Will.

"Probably a broom closet," said Will. "Do you want to have a look inside?"

"No, I am afraid I am allergic toward brooms," he joked, but then he put up a dramatic pose and said, "I get some terrible rash if I get to close. If there happens to be stored soap and water there too, I might end up hospitalized for weeks on intensive care with letter and restraining order."

Will giggled and Susan said, "Perhaps you should let Will have a look instead, it would do her good learning what a broom look like."

"Mom!"

"Open it and have a look, Dean and I will be in the neighboring room."

"Ok, mom." Will said and opened the door.

But as it turned out, it wasn't a closet. Inside was a narrow staircase witch undoubtedly led to the attic. Will looked up and saw that it wasn't completely dark at the top, a dim light, probably originating from a roof window somewhere made the outline of another room just visible. One part of her wanted nothing more than step back out and close the door after her, but some morbid curiosity also made her want to know what lay at the top of the stairs. _Damn curiosity_! Listening, she could hear the voice of Dean and Susan discussing something right on the other side of the wall, so she decided to take a quick peek.

The stairs creaked under her as she tried to climb them as silently as possible while holding her breath. Her eyes never left the empty doorframe at the top.

Will's head slowly emerged from the top of the stairs, looking carefully around. She was looking into yet another corridor, it was narrow, and the light she had seen came from a roof window perhaps as much as thirty meters away. She couldn't really see if the corridor continued behind it, the light acted like a shield that prevented her from seeing further. Suddenly, she caught eye of a light switch on the wall right above her. Will stood up and tried to turn it on to see if it still worked, surprisingly it did. The light turned on with a steady hum sound and lit up the entire corridor.

The corridor continued past the window as she had suspected, but it was nothing more to see, the corridor was empty and led nowhere. There were some doors on the walls on each side and Will guessed it only was storerooms behind them with more scrap she didn't want to see. Badly wanting to reunite with her family again, she turned off the lights, ready to leave.

When the light went off, the only source of light was again the small window. But now she suddenly thought she could see something more…

Right behind the light, at the edge between pitch dark and barely visible, was the faint outline of something that resembled a humanoid figure.

Will reached out and turned the lights fast on again, but there was nothing. The corridor was still as empty as it had been.

" _Just great,_ " Will thought frightened, " _Now I am scaring myself again. There is absolutely nothing there…"_

She took a couple of steps back while staring into the empty attic. Two steps down the stairs, she reached for the switch and turned it off again.

This time there was no creepy shadow standing there. Will stared back into the dark for a split second, then she hurried back downstairs to Dean and Susan, wanting to forget about the whole thing as fast as possible.

* * *

It was past midday before they finally came down and could take a look at the left wing on the first floor. The wing had a great hall at the far end; it was the old canteen, which served the patients and Will guessed it had served the monks as well. The chairs were neatly placed closed up to the tables, against the walls stood old wending machines that once contained chocolate bars and soda. The floor was colored in an ugly lime green color and Susan commented that it must have made the poor people here seasick on dry land.

Will didn't pay much attention to this. All she could think of was what she had seen in the pictures that laid hidden in her pocket. They showed the gruesome remains of mutilated human corpses that she was sure had been some of the missing patients. Somebody, and she could think of two who that might have been, had found them, despite the reports that none of the missing people ever had been found again. At one level, Will could understand why the photographer didn't want to report it to anyone, having your patients and customers end up like that would without doubt ruin your business. The people in the pictures were nothing more than cadavers. Old and rotten, torn apart, with missing limbs and inner body parts. Yes, Will had seen her fair deal of dead peoples during her time as a guardian. Not everything could be solved with diplomacy and magical tricks, but the dead usually kept their vitals intact or were deposed in a discreet manner. Whatever was on the loose back then clearly didn't care much for the living or the dead. The photos however, did not reveal much more, they were black and white, quite dark and no name was written, neither place nor date. But in the background in one of the pictures, she thought she could see a stonewall so it could be inside a house somewhere…!

In her mind, the unanswered questions piled up, " _Where and when were this pictures taken, and by whom? Why was it newer reported, what is this thing that did this, and is it still out there?_ " She thought and kept glancing at her parents' who was chatting among themselves. If whatever did this, still was here, they might be in danger.

Will decided that when they left later today, she would contact rest of the guardians immediately and tell them what she had found. In the meanwhile, she was going to stick closely to her parents; she didn't feel she wanted to face this monster on her own either.

It was around two o' clock and Susan said it was dinnertime or lunch, but if they decided to stop someplace later on their trip back they could have a real dinner then. Therefore, they went back to the kitchen where Will and Susan made some simple sandwiches again. Due to the lack of warm water Susan did not want to make anything more fancy, Will suggested they could use the oven to heat the water, but Susan pointed out that the oven used gas, and she would not risk trying it in case there was some leakage from it. Dean and William waited for them in the living room, and not before long, the girls had joined them.

While they ate, Dean and Susan discussed what they had seen so far. Both of them saw the possibilities this place had for hotel business if someone wanted to buy it. If Dean said yes to the testament, it meant they would have to pay an awfully amount of money in taxes while they looked for a buyer, and it was always the risk that no one wanted to buy it. Neither of them wanted to keep it, that they agreed on. They had no use for it and the whole place needed a lot of restauration in order to make it livable. However, if Dean said yes and they found a buyer, they could earn a lot of money on the sale. The problem was that the lawyer held all the documents and Dean hadn't seen them yet, if there were restrictions, old debt or anything else that followed this building, it could be a problem. The best was to wait and see what the lawyer had with him and make up their minds then. Will listened to the conversation but only said something when she was asked. Halfway through, she took up one of the books she had taken with her and started to read in it and did not register her mother trying to make contact with her.

"Will," her mother said disapproving, "Are you really going to read that thing while we are eating, can't you put it away until later?"

Will only stared in her book and grunted out an answer that no one understood.

"Will," her mother said again with an angry voice, "Put that thing away when we eat and have a civil conversation with us instead!"

Her daughter slowly turned her head to face her with an annoyed expression before she closed the book and pushed it aside on the table.

"Now as I was trying to ask," Susan said, "What do you think we should do?"

"Do about what?" Will said.

"This house of course," the irritated woman said, "We have seen through almost the entire building and found it way too expensive to be renovated. Should we keep it as it is for now and try to sell it later, or should we reject the testament and say no to the entire thing?"

"I'd say we say no and leave as soon as possible," said Will. Then she stopped and looked at Susan and Dean and said slowly, "What do you mean with almost the entire building?"

"We only have the basement left, and I think it will be just enough time for that before the lawyer arrives. We will have a look right after we have finished eating." Said Susan.

Saying this, Susan saw how both Dean and Will suddenly got nervous and stopped eating. "Is there something matter with you?" Susan said and eyed them suspiciously.

"Nothing!" they both blurted out simultaneously and looked at each other.

"Then way are you behaving like that. Don't tell me you are afraid of a dusty old basement, the worst thing you probably will find there are some fat old rats."

Neither Will nor Dean said anything to defend themselves, all that was on Will's mind was the motive she had seen earlier, grizzly eternalized in the photos. Dean however, was thinking back to last night on the direction the ghostly footsteps had walked…

"If you are finished," Susan said and saw that the other two had stopped eating, "Then perhaps we should go and have a look?" Dean and Will suddenly got a look that told the matriarch that they must have wished they were somewhere else, but Susan didn't bother to comment their childish behavior any more.

Her mother cleaned of the table quickly, and soon they were walking toward the end of the corridor. Susan took care of William this time so Will walked beside her stepfather. When they stopped in front of the door, Susan waited for Dean or Will to open it, but neither of them did.

"Come on," she said, "Stop pretend you are babies, even William behave more adult then you," and looked at the calm three year old in her arms. She fastened her grip of her child in her left arm in order to get her right hand free. Stretched it out, took hold on the doorknob, and turned it around. " _Click_ " it said, and the old door opened slowly with a horrible creak.

Will's fright from earlier came back with full force as she thought with increasingly fear, _"I swear, that door was locked last night!_ "


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

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It was dark, and that was all Will could see before her sight adjusted to the new environment. The stairway did not have any windows; the only source of natural light came from the door opening where she, her brother and parents stood. Her mother was the first to move, together with William she walked into the stair room. The small room contained only a platform that covered half the floor to where the stairs began, the walls and floor was made of naked grey stone just like the cold stairs.

"Dean dear," Susan said, "didn't you have a flashlight?"

"Yes, here it is," he said and took up an old Maglite from his pocket.

Will could see on her stepfathers face that he didn't want to go downstairs more than she did, but he probably wouldn't say otherwise in fear of never hear the end of it. Dean turned on the flashlight and used the opportunity the new light gave and took a careful look through the room. The light beam went up to the ceiling and revealed a lamp without a lightbulb, this was followed by a small curse escaping from Deans lips. Then he pointed the light towards the stairs and let it dwell by it.

Will felt cold and sick where she stood, as if an invisible force had taken grip on her, and before she knew it, she was walking as in a trance towards the frightening stairs. She came to stop at the top of the staircase and looked down into the unknown. From the abyss under her, she felt a dark aura of fright and terror rolling up. Will just wanted to turn around and run out of there, but unfortunately, her mother felt otherwise.

" _Alright then_ ," Susan said with an easy tone, "Dean, you got the light so you will have to go first and see that there are nothing wrong with the stairs."

Dean gulped and stared down to where the more unpleasant parts of his imagination had let him wander more than one night before. " _Abandon all hope ye who enters here,_ " said Dean and quoted what the ancient Greeks thought was written on the gates to Hades.

"You don't think you are exaggerating a bit now," said Susan mildly irritated. Dean smiled bravely to his wife and Will, and let his Maglite shine on the first step before he started to walk followed closely by Will and Susan.

All too soon, they stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking into the murky basement. Years later when asked what she felt when she stood there; she could remember the foul smell of damp earth and dust that lay still like air inside an ancient tomb. The basement was so dark that whatever lay outside the beam from the flashlight remained invisible.

Dean let his Maglite sweep over the surroundings and Will saw they had come into a room that was not too large, however, the dark and the lack of any interior made the space feel bigger than it probably was. The walls down here also served as foundation for the rest of the house, thick dark grey stones, once torn out from hard rock and later put on top of each other to keep the work of men stand for centuries. Some of the stones had deep cracks that split them all the way through, and around those cracks, black slimy mold thrived as if they were infested wounds. From the ceiling to the floor, Will estimated the height of the room to be three meters, the wide of the room approximately trice of this. At the other side of the room on the middle of the wall stood a lonely door. Due to the lack of anything else in the room, Will, Dean and Susan begun walking towards it.

"I wonder what's on the other side." Susan said to no one in particular, put her free hand on the doorknob, and turned it around. Any hope Will had that they could somewhat sneak inside in relatively silence was shattered by the painfully groan the door made when it opened. Was there something down here, it had certainly been alerted of their arrival by that blasted door.

Three people and one child stood and tried to look inwards. If the first room they entered had been dark, this one was pitch dark. Dean pointed his light through and forth in the room, but the darkness seemed to swallow it wherever he pointed it. Will felt her inner guardian instincts scream at her, probably with good help from her imaginations as her thoughts had wandered to the fate of the three people she had seen on the pictures. The light from the Maglite landed on a light switch to the right of the doorframe.

"Here, let me..," Will said and hurried over before anyone else tried to reach for it. If, against all her expectation the light worked, there would be light when she switched it on. If the light didn't work, she would take the chance and force it to work with her magic, as long as there were light bulbs of course. She turned on the switch and waited.

Nothing.

Dean was still pointing the light towards her and the light switch. "Perhaps it will work if I try it again," she said and smiled nervous to the adults. Without waiting for a replay, she turned the switch off, waited a second, and turned it on again, this time with a magical spark. And literally, by magic, the lights went on from the ceiling around them.

They all gasped. They were standing in a huge room, and all around them were boxes, chests, shelves, of every shape and size. There were a lot of old equipment from the asylum and some from the monastery period, a pile of books here and some medical tools there. Unfortunately, it was quite some distance between the old lamps, and some of them didn't have any lightbulbs inside of them, those areas were therefore dark.

Will looked around herself, as did her parents, even William seemed to be watching his surroundings carefully. "Wow, there seem to be a lot of stuff around here," Will whispered. "Did they never throw away anything at all?"

"You never know when old stuff can be useful, but this?" Dean answered her. Then he started to walk. He didn't turn off his flashlight because it was still useful were the shadows were too dark for the meager light from the lamps.

Will began walking around too, but stuck closely to Susan and Dean, as she had no desire wandering too far away. They opened a few chests and boxes to see what was inside of them, spoons, candles, more books, endless amount of papers with medical records, and surprisingly objects that must have been someone's personal belongings. Why this hadn't been collected a long time ago wasn't obvious for neither of her parents, but Will had a ugly feeling she knew which people these once had belonged too.

Dean opened an old cabinet and made a sound of surprise. "Hey Will, come and have a look at this," he said. Will turned around from the box she was studying and looked over to Dean,

"What is it?" she said.

"I think this must have belonged to the monks who lived here," said Dean and pulled out a huge black piece of cloth.

Will studied it for a moment before she said, "And what would that be?"

"This," the learned man said, "…is a monks robe! To think that they still exist after all these years. How do I look?" And with that he pulled the robe around himself and pretended to be a monk to humor her.

Will looked at him and gave him an honest smile in reward for his somewhat childish attempt. That was one of the reasons she liked her stepfather, he was a kind man, with a good sense of humor and self-irony. When he did something funny, you didn't laugh of him, you were laughing with him, and above all, she knew he loved her mother. That was the most important of all. The teenage witch momentarily forgot her fear and went to the cabinet where Dean stood and pulled out another robe for herself. It was way too large for her, but she put it on. Then they walked to Susan who had her back against them and stood bend over a pile of moldy old books.

"May I have the book of hymns." Dean said in a low voice to his wife.

Susan jumped quickly around and eyed two robe-clad people who stared at her with an innocent glance and folded hands. "So, I see you two have time for fun, perhaps we are finished here then. And by the way, your robe is several numbers too big for you, sister." Susan said with emphasis on her last word and smiled to Will.

"If God will, I will grow to fit into it." Will said gravely and bowed her head for her mother.

"I am not sure you will grow to fit into that thing no matter how much you pray," Susan replied, whereupon Will and Dean chuckled. However, their good humor ended when one of the lights nearby started to flash. "Maybe we should hurry to get finished her so we can go upstairs again," said Dean.

He went back to the cabinet and lay off his robe. Will was going to do the same, but she decided to keep it on, the basement was a chilly place and the robe warmed her surprisingly well.

"Are you going to keep that on?" her mother said.

"Yes, it is a bit cold down here I think, so will keep it on for now if it is okay. Besides, I think it looks cool on me. I look like a real witch, or what do you think?" The truth behind her statement passed her parents completely.

"Alright, if you feel cold you can keep it on for now, but I don't want to see you take it with you home to impress your friends, it is probably rotten and filled with moth." Said Susan.

They did however start to explore the basement again, and the eerie feeling from earlier came back and laid down like a pressuring atmosphere around them. None said much as they all felt the shadows growing darker the further into the room they went. At the far end of the room, right in the middle and half-hidden behind a pile of moldy clothes, was a door. It was to Wills surprise smaller than the first door they had entered when coming into this room. She felt colder the closer she came to the door and a dreadful feeling wormed into her. Will prayed silently that neither her mom nor Dean would see it as she tried to walk away. But just when she thought her prayers had been heard, she heard the three little words she desperately didn't want to hear.

"Look. A door!" her mother said.

Will turned to her mother and uttered with a shaky voice, "Why don't we let it be mom, there's probably nothing more there than even more junk and old journals, and we really don't need to see them."

Susan eyed her daughter, "Oh come on Will, where has your sense of adventure gone? Lets' have a last look before we leave." said her mother.

This time her stepfather came to Will's defense, "Will is probably right; we don't need to know what's behind that door, and it is late, the lawyer will be here anytime soon so we should go."

"If none of you wish to have a look, than I will, I am not a scaredy-cat like the two of you." With that she handed over William to Dean and begun to clear away the old clothes.

Will and Dean did nothing to help her; they stood frozen like statues of stones and watched the woman remove the last obstacles in front of the door. Will just wanted to run away, she could feel the unmistakable signature of something made of dark magic coming from behind the door. Inside her mind, she could hear the silent voices from shadowlike people who screamed at her warning not to enter. No matter what they would find on the other side, it gave her a feeling of terror she never had known. She weighted her secret being a guardian against the unknown threat, and found the wellbeing of herself, her parents and brother to be the most important. Under her black robe, she secretly pulled out the heart of Kandrakar from seemingly nothing and made herself ready to transform.

Susan had cleared away everything that blocked her way to the door when she casted a glance over her shoulder back at her three companions. Dean was holding their son in a strong and secure grip, his face however told her that he clearly wished to be elsewhere. He was probably afraid of the dark, and Susan found it amusing that someone who was adult thought of the lack of light to be terrifying. But it was her daughter that made her wonder. Her face was one of pure terror and she seemed to be on the verge of actually panic. Under the black robe, Susan could see Will nervously fickle with something, or perhaps she twisted her fingers against each other. A struck of doubt held her back from opening the door, but only for a moment. She turned back to the door, laid her hands on the wood and pushed it. The door went inwards.

Shhhhhhhh.

The sound of air being sucked into the mysterious room made the hair on their necks rise. The door only opened a little before it met resistance. Susan looked down and saw the bottom of the door pressed against soil, she realized it was the ground floor, _strange_. Not stones or wooden planks to walk upon, just old dry soil. She pushed on harder, the door opened more, and more until the opening was big enough to let all of them see inside from where they stood.

The light from the room behind them casted a weak and narrow beam of light that cut right through the dark room. The beam went inwards for twenty or thirty meters and just before the light ended, it shone on the only visible thing there. A closed wardrobe.

It was a plain wooden wardrobe, perhaps two meters tall and one and a half wide without any signs or markings of any kind. Susan stood in the doorframe, but didn't dear to walk inside. The whole thing seemed to absurd and the smell of mold and decay inside was overwhelming and made her unconsciously think of a grave chamber. The absolute darkness made it impossible to see if there was anything else in the room beside the single furniture.

Time stood still as all sound and motions came to a halt. Why would anyone use a whole room to store a single wardrobe? And why not place it together with the rest of the junk in the other room? Although it was impossible to see if there was anything else in the room, Susan got the feeling that it was nothing else there and she suddenly wished she never had opened the door after all. So without lingering for any moment longer, she pulled back and closed the door securely after her.

* * *

 **Hi, a little note at the end of this chapter for the readers who isn't too familiar with the comics. Since this story take place after the witch girls got their new powers (around halfway out in the comics they learned to access the core of their magic, something that also made them much stronger), they don't need the heart to transform, so when Will take out the heart here, it is only to comfort/calm herself a little.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Hello again and thanks for encouraging reviews. Here is a new chapter for you.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

"Now, that wasn't so bad was it?" Susan said after she had closed the door, although she wasn't too sure about that. Neither Dean nor William didn't say anything, and Will had tears in her eyes.

"Let's go back." Said Will with such a fragile voice that Susan under other circumstances would have thought it came from someone else.

The huge basement felt even colder and darker than before, some of the lightbulbs must have gone out without their notice while they looked into the other room, so when Dean asked if they could leave, everybody agreed. First went Dean with William, then came Susan with Will right behind. Will looked steadily back over her shoulder, the feeling of being observed was overwhelming.

They left the murky old basement and as the passed the switch, Will turned off the light the same way she had previously turned it on. As she closed the door behind her, she made sure it was properly shut. They hurried up the stairs and back into the corridor. Will felt a rush of relief when they five minutes later sat in the living room and nothing bad had happened. However, because her mind had been wrapped in fear on her way back she didn't think to take of her robe, so she was still wearing it when she sat down. Dean looked at his watch; it was five minutes to four o'clock. So they had a couple of minutes left until the lawyer would arrive, Will and Susan went back to their bedrooms and begun to pack their things. Inside her room, Will hung off her robe on a hook next to the door and begun packing. She stuffed away her pyjamas and necessaries in her bag, the things belonging to William she gave to her mother so she could pack it away together with her own stuff. For some reason still not understood by Will, her mother always seemed to be able to pack an impossible amount of clothes and other things in her suitcase. If Will had been asked doing that, she would have shrunken everything until was room enough for it all.

The clock was five past four when they again sat together in the living room. Dean was currently trying to turn on the TV, but to his surprise he didn't manage it, no matter what he did the only result he got was; Channel one: Fog! Channel two: Snow! Channel three: More snow. Channel four: Black! He turned around and smiled to Will and said _,_ _"_ Hey Will, it seems I am in need for your technical assistance. I seem to be unable to turn this thing on. You think you could lend me a hand?"

Happy to get her thoughts out and up from the cellar, Will went to assist him. She jogged over to the TV, put her hand behind it, and gave the old TV a knock. This was of course just a diversion so Dean wouldn't realize that the TV would have turned on no matter what sort of "technical" assistance she gave it. Channel four went on, and showed famous collections of stamps from around the world.

The program ended half an hour later, and neither of the viewers found themselves more interested in stamps than they had been half an hour earlier. Dean looked at his watch again; "half past five, he should be here any minute now." A new program about vanishing bees appeared, and outside the sun was on its way down. A little while into the program, Dean took up his mobile phone, who Will knew called itself Siemen for some reason…, and phoned the lawyer's office.

"Yes hello, it is Dean…., Yes, Okay,…, what do you mean by that….Oh I see…. Are you sure? How long?" Dean talked to his phone, and Will wondered what it was. Finally, the conversation ended and her stepfather hung on.

"I called the lawyer office and asked why our lawyer is so late," Dean said with a down struck voice. "Then they told me the appointment wasn't before tomorrow!

"What?" said Susan.

"I know" Dean continued, "but following the letter I got, the date today is correct. I guess somebody must have messed up when they wrote the letter. Nobody at the lawyer's office knew about it but the person I spoke with said they was sorry for this and will send a lawyer with the testament over here tomorrow as early as they can."

Nobody in the room were particular happy about this turn of the events.

"You mean we will stay here for another night!" Will nearly screamed.

"Will!" Susan scolded, "You will be home and be able to see your friends again soon enough, it really doesn't matter if we are staying here one more night. We all got a couple of days off, so one extra day together will not harm."

Will answered back with desperation in her voice, "Can't we at least travel down to the village and see if we can find a room there. That would be so much better than staying up here for another night!"

"Will calm down," her mother said, not wanting a fight with her daughter. "If the lawyer comes early tomorrow then it will be all fine, as for sleeping in the village tonight, I am afraid that is out of option."

"Why," Will said and stared angrily at Susan.

"When we ordered food there yesterday, I asked if there was any place for us to stay for the night, but the man who took our order said the only hotel there shut their doors right after the asylum had closed. Apparently, they didn't have enough guests anymore when relatives of the patients stopped coming. Therefore we will be staying here for another night."

"Shall I help unpack our things again since you already had to pack it a little while ago?" Dean said it to be nice to his wife, but his voice clearly stated that he didn't look forward to one more night.

Will was just afraid and angry, afraid because she couldn't get away, and angry because she couldn't tell anyone for the reasons for her fears. She rose up and begun walking, without any goal in mind, she ended up in the kitchen; sat down on a chair and tried to think. Her gaze wandered around before her eyes fell on the thick books she had brought with her from the office earlier today. Having nothing better to do, and perhaps learn something more she began reading again, this time more slowly. It didn't take long before she came over a new disappearance.

 _6\. July 1870_

 _Nine month since brother Addams mysteriously vanished, we had a new case of disappearance. Brother Abe Johnson unexpectedly disappeared last night. He was last seen when he went to his room for the evening, and thought nothing in his room is missing that should suggest he would leave; his books laid scattered on the floor and his bed stood askew. Johnson is a careful man who like to have his room neat and tidy, even when he have the luxury of having a room on his own. We looked through the entire building and on the outside, but no one had even see him leave. Tomorrow we will seek help from the hunters again to look further into the forest.  
The garden are in need of more water, the peas are not growing well and McKinley fell asleep during dinner._

 _7\. July 1870_

 _We will have help from three bear hunters who are in the area, Johan van Hein, Jacob Wilhelmsen and Henri Fjord. Four of our monks will accompany them and look for our lost brother. I hope that if it is Gods will, Brother Johnson will be found again. The weather has not been all too good lately, much clouds and wind, but no rain so far, at least that mean the rivers will not be big enough to be a hindrance_

The passage was short and ended there, Will worked herself down the page and the following ones, but the only conclusion was that no one had been found. As the years went on, the daily work continued as before and the teenage witch learned more than she ever wanted about the monotone life of a monastery. Sometime they got visits from some dignitaries or relatives, or some from the monastery wanted to leave and move on with new things in life. But time again and again there was somebody who disappeared without any trace, and she could see how the thoughts of the author were saddened by this. Around the 1890's there was a new author, apparently the old one died of old age or couldn't see good enough to write anymore. It seemed the new author, Brother Jan Mayen, put more effort trying to solve the riddle behind the mysterious disappearances. He came up with several theories ranging from carefully planned escapes, to wild animals, but something caught Wills attention. From one of his wilder theories about abduction by angels, he had suddenly turned to the old Indian legend from this place, and Will red…

 _14\. April 1892_

 _Today my thoughts wandered back to the legends about this place, and I started to think what the old people had told me when I first came her as a young devote soul in search of God. This place was of old Indian lands, and natives here kept a legend attached to it that made my soul shiver. I first learned about it when I was looking through the first annals written for this monastery. A demon is said once to have roamed this land and prayed on the people who lived her, but a nameless hero put an end to it. I couldn't find anything more written about the legend, but an old friend of mine who is a hunter, passed by on his way back from the mountains today. He knows a lot of old stories, so after dinner today asked him if he knew anything more about it.  
I was right, my friend knew about this story; he told me the Indians had called it Ngh-haa. The story he told me was this.  
Once upon a time, long ago there was a war between two tribes. War between those two was nothing unusual, but this particular war was especially bitter. This region normally had a lot of various animals; elk, deer, beavers, bears and smaller animals beside of fish in the river and nuts and other vegetables the forest provides. However, one year the animals kept away, and the harvest from the forest was very small. This made it hard for the two tribes who lived there to find enough food to feed themselves and no one wanted to move. Therefore, the men had to go further and further away for every day that passed to hunt, leaving their children, wives and elders back home. One day, the hunters from one of the tribes came back with plenty of game for them all, members from the other tribe came to them begging for food, but they were refused and left to starve and many of their clansmen died of hunger. Weeks later, when the men in the first tribe again were out on hunting, the other tribe, driven by hunger attacked those people from the first tribe who stayed behind. Their attack was primarily to take whatever they could find of food, perhaps corn, stored meat and beasts, not to go to war, but those who were guarding their precious food put up a fierce resistance, even though they were completely outnumbered. Soon many of the defenders were dead and quite a number of attackers too. However, the other tribe had reached its goal and took with them what edible they could find, now it was the survivors of the first tribe who were left to starve. It took a long time before the hunters came back again with food this time, and when they finally did, they found that most of their beloved ones who had survived the attack had perished from hunger. Filled with wrath, the men turned to their shaman and asked him to revenge their dead ones. The shaman then turned to his most powerful sacred objects, lined them up, and from them he called upon an unholy spirit from the world beyond and ordered it to attack their enemies. It was said this demon came from the deepest of hell, its body dark as night and wrapped in a layer of mist, it moved in the shadows and left a trace of horror wherever it went. The other tribe was taken completely by surprise and nearly obliterated, only some few were left alive. But when the creature had done its deed, he refused to go back from where it came and killed the shaman who had summoned him, thereafter it started to torment the last tribe. Suddenly at nights, people would disappear without a trace, and those few who were found again had been ripped to pieces beyond recognition. This terror continued for several years, and many of the remaining clansmen left their tribe and escape to other land until one day, one young and brave warrior decided to stop the monster. He dug up the sacred objects that had been buried together with the shaman and went looking for the demon. He looked for several days, but could not find it, nor did he really know what to do when he encountered the beast. Then one night he felt himself being observed even though he was far away from people. He knew the creature was close. When he later fell asleep, his late father's spirit came in a dream to guide him. He dreamed he chanted out a spell and saw the sacred objects he had brought with him had strange carved symbols that started to glow, and when they did so, a dark shadow was sucked into them. When he woke up the next day, he knew what to do. On a clearing on the top of a small hill, he placed the sacred objects in a circle and dug them half down into the earth so they should be hard to spot. He then sat down in the middle of the circle and waited. The following night, the terror of the forest came again, but the young warrior was ready for him. It was a moonless night and almost pitch dark, only the stars gave light to the sky above. The man felt a fear beyond belief while he sat there alone and the shadow crept closer to him. Just at the last possible moment, he turned around to face the creature and chanted the spell. The demon let out a horrible scream when it split apart and was pulled into each of the objects that lay hidden in the ground. The next morning he buried the objects deep into the hill where he stood, after that he sent a prayer to his father and ancestors and thanked them for their help. After that, no monster or demon were seen again, its terror sealed away and buried so no one would find it._

 _So ended my friend's story. I got a dreadful feeling that whatever that had been sealed away in those objects, has been disturbed and is now terrorizing us. The mysterious disappearances this monastery have experienced over the years are way too similar to what happened in the legend to be a coincidence. My fear is that this very monastery lies on the same spot where those objects have been buried, and some of them must have been accidently broken. There is a tiny village and some farms further down, but none of those has reported any disappearances or other unnatural phenomena, so it is likely to believe that this creature is somehow restricted to this house for now. I do not know if I hold the power to exorcise the demon back to hell, but in the name of God our Lord I will find those broken objects, repair them and bury them so no one will be able to find them again. Tomorrow, I will have both the garden and the basement carefully dug up so I can look for them and hopefully put an end to this._

 _15\. April 1892_

 _Today I called on my brothers to help me dig in the garden. I have not told them the real reason for doing so because I fear no one would believe me if I did, luckily we have not planted any seeds for this year yet so I could do so under the excuse to turn the soil to give it some air. Nothing have been found so far with the exception of natural rocks of various sizes._

For several passages there was written about how the scribe, who Will by now understood also was head of this monastery, turned the garden up-side down without finding anything. Will was wondering how the other monks could do so much work, which in her eyes was meaningless, without complaining, but then again, that was other times and people was more inclined to follow orders from authority without questions.

 _2\. May 1892_

 _I am sure there is nothing to be found in the gardens or other places around the monastery where the objects could have been disturbed when this place was built. Now, the only place left too look is in the basements, neither of them have any proper floor yet, only bare soil. I will on our collegial meeting next week, put forward a proposal for laying new floors and if that will pass, I will have an excuse for digging there too._

Here, Will slipped forward to the date for the meeting, and brother Mayen got his will regarding new floors. There had been complains earlier about rats and mice that came up from there, and they used to store grain and corn in the basement so a floor was a welcome proposal that was met with enthusiasm. A month later the work began, and the monk started writing about his progress again.

 _4\. June 1892_

 _Today I begun to dig, I have not found anything yet but I feel I should hurry. No one have disappeared for a while so I am afraid someone while go missing soon if I not find out of this.  
The weather have been great lately and this year's crops will be a rich one, it is clear the job we did with turning the soil did wonders. A new arrangement for how the kitchen shall be managed is under discussion, brother Smith and Smuhle disagree over their share._

 _5\. June 1892_

 _Late this day I found what I have been locking for so long. I was digging close to the left corner in the innermost part of the basement when I found them. There are twelve objects which all had been buried on the same place so I am sure that must be all of them. Each have on a close inspection different symbols carved into them. The objects seem to be old, are made of various materials such as wood, bone, ceramic, stone, and are of different shape but have the same size that fit in a palm. But most importantly, all of the four objects made out of ceramic were been broken in several pieces undoubtedly happened when the basement was dug out several years ago. I have spent the entire time since then gluing the pieces together again, but I have no idea if that alone will work and to my horror I suddenly realized I do not know what words were being said to trap the demon all those years ago! I will, when the glue have dried, open my Bible and read from it together with all prayers I know and hope that something will work.  
I guess I now can give the permission for beginning to lay down the new floor, most of the work we will do ourselves, but some carpenters are hired to help with the more elaborate parts._

 _6\. June 1892_

 _This day have been the most horrible day in my life, but at the same time the greatest one in my life as a humble monk, perhaps this was the reason why God led me to this monastery. I managed after hours of tries to banish this abdominal beast into the old objects again. For hours I red loudly, chanted out prayers, psalms and verses from the book of books, before I finally did it. Know this you who read my writing, to seal away this demon read aloud and with a clear voice this three prayers, from the books of Psalms; 51: 1-8, from the book of Exodus; 33:13 and from Jonah's prayer; 2:2-9 while the sacred objects are set in a circle in front of you. When I did so, I and everyone else in the monastery, heard a scream, a horrible scream that is the sound of the most unholy demon. Around me from every corner a mist dark as the pits of hell appeared. I feared the beast had come for me, and it felt like my soul would freeze and that I never would see the next day. The mist however, was dragged into the four ceramic objects I so carefully had repaired, and while that went on, the symbols on their sides glowed. The shadow tried to grab whatever it found and hold onto it, but to no avail. Only a moment after it first appeared, it was gone. Tomorrow I will bring the objects with me deep into the woods and bury them on a place I hope they never will be disturbed again.  
At mass later, I let the monks sing twice as many hymns to praise than what is normally recommended, and I joined them with great joy and delight._

Finally, Will had found the answer to what had happened back then and how this whole thing began. The question now was, why did people start disappearing again if the monk had sealed away the demon repaired the objects and hidden them away. Had they been found and broken again or…? Suddenly the mysterious little trips made by Mr. Henderson and Ms. Betty into the forest seemed not so mysterious anymore. Will thought she would have to make a little visit into the old man's office tonight and have a look for more clues.


	9. Chapter 9

**I highly recommend you to read this and the following chapters at night, accompanied by some creepy background music (you can find something on youtube).**

 **As usual, I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

They went to bed around ten o'clock after a fruitless search for any interesting program on the TV. On the way to her room to pick up her toothbrush, Will stopped by a window and looked outside. It had been cloudy the entire day and she had felt the temperature dropped significant when the evening came. Close up to the window, she could see tiny snowflakes that fell from the sky, signaling the arrival of the winter and the end of the autumn. It would probably be several days or even weeks before this happened home in Heatherfield due to its closeness to the ocean, but up here, it was only natural for the winter to come earlier.

"What are you thinking about?" An approaching Dean said softly to Will.

"Not much," she said, "it is snowing outside, do you think that will make it difficult to drive home tomorrow?"

Dean looked out the same window, and said, "Nothing to worry about, we have four wheel drive remember. Perhaps you might want to practice driving the car, I am sure I can persuade your mom to let you try."

Will gave a genuine smile back to Dean, "Thank you Dean, I will think about it, because I am not sure if I am ready to drive on snow filled roads yet." Dean gave her a nod and went into his and Susan's room to collect his stuff, Will followed his example by collecting her and William's too.

Soon, the sound of four pair of feet could be heard down the corridor as the family went to the bathroom together. The bathroom affair was a quick one, the cold weather outside had its influence on the temperature on the inside and everyone wanted a nice and warm bed to cuddle into before it became even colder. They went back, said goodnight to each other and went to their separate rooms. Unfortunately for Will, her brother had difficulties falling to sleep, and she therefor had to wait to after midnight before she could sneak out again.

The bed was nice and warm before Will felt her brother finally had fallen asleep. She stood up carefully not to wake him. " _Come on Will, it is now or never,_ " she thought to herself while her body tried to resist leaving the warm bed for the cold room, " _You have done more dangerous things than this_ " but she wasn't sure if she meant getting up or leave the safety of her room. Nevertheless, she got up without waking anyone. Will felt the cold hit her feet like a fist and started shivering, " _Maybe I should try with more clothe on tonight?_ " Will thought, and then an idea hit her. She tiptoed over the floor and found the old robe she had stowed away in the cabinet and put it on. That should warm her a little. She fumbled a little more in the dark and found her shoes too.

Beside William's light breathing and her owns struggle to put on the footwear, the night was deathly silent. Something that made it possible for her thoughts going back to the questions that kept building up in her head. " _I wonder what happened to the demon when the asylum closed, was it sealed away again or was it forgotten?_ _Mr. Henderson also disappeared, not long after that, did this creature have something to do with that or was it something else?"_

Will felt scared again. She would have to face this alone, if she called on the other guardians and her parents discovered them, she would have a major problem explaining their sudden appearance all the way out here. But what if something waited on her in the hall or in some of the rooms she was going to investigate? The dark history of the house had really crept under her skin.

" _I am not sure if this will be a good or a bad idea_ " she thought and pulled out the heart of Kandrakar under her robe, " _But better safe than sorry,_ " and with that, she transformed.

Will felt the warm and bright glow from the Heart flow through her, her body started to grow and mature while large fairy wings sprouted out from her back under the robe. Her wings were now longer than both her arms when she stretched them out and probably made a bulge on her back right now. Under her black monk-robe, her thin pyjamas made way for her guardian uniform and she instantly experienced the upside of having magical clothes, even if it was cold tonight they would keep her warm and to a certain degree protect her from harm. Will walked across the room to a tiny mirror that hung on the wall and looked into it, not everyone had the chance to see how they would look like when they grew up, but she knew that the redhead that looked back at her from the mirror was one of five on this earth who could do just that. Do to her new height and the boots she had (it hadn't been necessary at all to put on her other shoes), the robe she wore now fitted all of sudden. Her eyesight improved significantly too, more than enough to let her see well in the dark room and after taking a last look in the mirror, she opened the door and snuck out.

* * *

In her bed, Susan had woken up again and couldn't get back to sleep for some reason, and after tossing around for quite some time she began to feel the need of using the bathroom. Therefor she decided to get up, carefully not to wake her husband who lay beside her. She knew he hadn't slept well the last night for some reason, so she didn't wanted to disturb him now. Ever so silent she walked across the room to the door, opened it and went over to the bathroom, the floor creaking for every step she took.

Susan finished quickly and was on her way back to her room when she saw something move further into in the corridor. The dark made it difficult to see, but she was sure it was Will's door that opened.

Susan stopped, " _Is that Will who walk over there_?" she thought, and expected her daughter to walk towards to the bathroom as she could not see any other reason for her daughter to be out of bed. But the dark figure turned away and started to walk in utter silence in the opposite direction, towards the entrance hall and the reception. Susan couldn't for the life of it figure out why, Will had made clear that she didn't like this house, so why would she be up and walking during the middle of the night? Had her daughter lied to her, or was there something she was hiding? Knowing that her husband was sound asleep, she decided to follow after and see what was going on. Susan tiptoed after what she thought to be her daughter, trying to be as silent on the creaking floor as possible.

* * *

Will closed the door after her and started walking, she hadn't taken many steps however before she heard the sound of soft footsteps behind her. The fear came to her in an instant, her grim imagination gave her unpleasant ideas of what it could be and she didn't dare to turn around to see. Just to confirm that it wasn't her own fantasy playing with her senses or her own footsteps she heard, she stopped for a moment to listen. The sound continue a little and then they stopped. Will started to walk again, and after two steps, she heard the sound follow her once more. She almost panicked and began walking faster. The darkness of the bleak house closed in on her, while she tried to hold back her tears and soundless gasped for air. After what felt like an eternity in her mind, but in reality was just a moment later, she found herself on the stairs halfway up to the third floor. Her mind raced, what should she do? If she attacked it, she was sure to awaken her family and what would she do when they came to see what was going on. The demon would certainly attack them if they came too close! Will decided to continue to the third floor; that would at least put some distance between the two of them and her family downstairs. She finished the last step on the stairs and raced toward the office room, and when inside, she looked the door in a way that she knew would make it clear which room she went into, and teleported to the neighboring room.

* * *

Susan followed her daughter through the corridor, but stopped for a moment when she saw the black figure began walk up the stairs. " _Will must have put on the moth infested robe she found in the basement,_ " she thought, " _If that thing ruins her pyjamas, she will have to buy a new one herself._ " The robe-clad figure went further upstairs, and when she was sure she wouldn't be spotted, Susan proceeded. She continued until she reached the third floor, Susan hurried up to the third last step where she crouched down and watched the door to the office swung open and closed. " _That was the room she had wanted to have a closer look at earlier today_ ," Susan thought, " _Have she found anything in there she don't want us to know about?_ " For a split moment, her mind started to wonder about what that could be, money, some illegal stuff, valuable jewelry or something else? She waited a moment to give her daughter time to begin with whatever she was going to do. Then she stood up again, walked straight to the door, and put her ear against it, and when she didn't hear anything she pulled it open and saw nothing.

The room was dark and empty; Will was nowhere to be seen. Susan took a few steps inside the room to be sure, and thought " _How could it be…_ "

" **Susan!** " a surprised voice said behind her. She let out a loud yelp and spun frightened around faster than she thought was possible for a woman in her age. And there, behind her in the doorframe stood her daughter. She wore the black robe, making her almost blend with the dark corridor behind and somewhat difficult to spot, and to make it worse, her normally fire-red hair looked gray with the lack of any light. Despite the dark and difficulties to see, Susan could see the expression on her daughters face, and it was one of complete surprise. Her daughter could only stare at her with big eyes for a moment, but eventually she decided to speak.

"What are you doing here mom?" she said still with a hint of surprise in her voice.

"Why I am here." Susan answered, "I was on my way back from a trip to the bathroom when I saw someone snuck out from their bedroom and then I decided to follow." She said.

"Oh, I see," said Will.

Susan who was looking suspiciously at her daughter said, "That's good, but _I_ don't see why you should need to sneak out in the middle of the night and come all the way up here. Would you like to enlighten me?" she said with a stern voice.

Will was relived that it only had been her mother she had sensed, but a new panic started to grow, what in the world should she tell her mom for her reason coming up here in the middle of the night. Her thoughts went back to the unnerving moments she had spent inside the other room, by coincidence; it was also the very bedroom that once belonged to Mr. Henderson. Suddenly she remembered a book that had laid there in her dark, and thanks to her being in her guardian form, the darkness didn't hinder her to notice it. The cover had said something about legends and fairytales so she tried to give it a shot.

"William had problem falling to sleep you see, and I remembered there was a book with fairytales up here so I thought I could go looking for it and read it to him. Hopefully it would help him to sleep." The lie wasn't that bad thought Will, she had often red stories for her little brother before he went to sleep, so maybe Susan would buy it.

Susan looked at her, "Hmm, but I am sure I could see you went into this room."

" _Whoops_!" Will thought, but before her mother could speculate any further, Will tried to contradict her, "No I went into the other room, right beside this one. I can get the book so you can see for yourself." With that, she quickly stepped out to the corridor and went into the other room to find the book.

Her mother followed a little behind but waited outside the room. Will picked up the book, went out to her waiting mother and showed it to her. Susan probably couldn't see the title from where she stood because she took a few steps closer to her and looked for the title of the book Will held in her hands. Her mother lifted her head again to look up at Will's eyes.

Her mother looked up at her!

She had now reached an age when she in her guardian form was taller than her mother, Will quickly jumped backwards to put some distance between them and prayed that Susan hadn't noticed it. To Will's relief, her mother didn't say anything, the dark probably made it difficult for her to see well enough, so Will began walking towards the stairs and said,

"Perhaps we should walk downstairs again, there is nothing left to do here now."

Her mother followed and said, _"_ Very well, I believe you, but I don't think you should read for William at this hour, he should rather try to sleep than listen to your stories. It would probably be better if you read for him tomorrow instead."

"Yes mom," said Will. She would have to wait a few more hours until she was sure her mother had fallen to sleep before she would dare sneak out again.

Susan followed her into her room and found William sound at sleep, Will said that must have happened while she was away and that was a good thing, because now she didn't have to read. They said silent goodnights to each other again and Susan went back to her own room.

* * *

An hour later, Susan was still not asleep she was in deep thoughts. Something wasn't right, her daughter whom she had the impression of being afraid of ghosts, was wandering alone in the middle of the night, _here_ , in an old asylum! What more, she was a hundred percent sure she had seen Will walk inside the office room, the very room she suddenly took interest in as fast as they stepped into the last day and _not_ , the neighboring room. That also brought back another memory. When they had opened the door to the office for the first time, Will had said the name of the man who was on the portrait at the other end of the room, and Susan had herself walked over there and confirmed it. How could she see his name all the way over there, it was written with such a tiny writing, or did she already know who it was, and if that was case, when did she learn it? Her daughter had shown no interests in this building before she came here, and when she did, she seemed scared. Then she had found the annals from the monastery period and started to read through all of them. That was not the Will she knew. And going upstairs looking for fairytales, " _Ha_ " that was a fairytale by itself. Susan had looked into her daughters eyes to read them and… now it was _her_ eyes that bulged, she had looked up at her daughter, not down!

Something was far from right, but how could she prove it.

Beside Susan, Dean had woken. After tossing and turning around in the bed for a little while, he understood that his wife wasn't asleep either so he got up and said he wanted to go to the kitchen to get some water because he was somewhat thirsty. She said it was ok, so he left her alone in the bed.

Susan was wondering how, or if, she should confront her daughter tomorrow. It was far from the first time Will had done or said something strange but she always managed to slip away with some extremely thin excuses or lies. And when she tried to ask her friends, they always managed to cover for each other.

While thinking over this she was staring up on the dark ceiling above when she suddenly felt the quilt over her started to slowly slide down and disappear over the edge of the bed. Susan grabbed it and tried to hold it back but it didn't work, she rose up into sitting position and tried to jerk it back, perhaps it was stuck. It didn't do this time either.

"Dean? Will? Is anyone of you trying to pull a prank on me?" Curious she looked over the edge to see what it could be…

* * *

Will was going to sneak out again, perhaps there was some personal journals or maybe a dairy in his bedroom, she would have a look. Silently she slipped out of her bed and put on the old robe. Luckily, her mother had left the room before she had to pull it off and reveal her other clothes under it. Not wanting to transform back again, she had just slipped off her boots and gone to bed fully clothes in her guardian uniform. Now she opened her door, peeked out into the corridor to both her left and right this time to be sure no one was there. Agile as a cat she slipped out and tiptoed soundless along the corridor.

But when she passed the kitchen she heard a familiar voice;

"Hello Will, why are you out of bed so late, are you thirsty too?"

Will got a frown on her face and turned her head slowly, looked into the kitchen, and saw her stepfather standing there holding a glass of water in his hand.

And to Dean's astonishment she exclaimed loudly "What! Is nobody at sleep tonight!"

They both stared at each other without saying a word, and then suddenly they heard a voice screaming:

" _ **AAAAaaaaaaaahhh**_ "

* * *

 **A/N. Should I stop here and take a loong vacation?**


	10. Chapter 10

**Read at night accompanied by some ereie music. Just a suggestion.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

" _ **AAAAaaaaaaaahhh**_ "

The sound of her mother's terrified scream made her blood freeze; Will turned around and without a second thought she flung towards her mother's bedroom where the screams came from. Dean followed after, but Will was inhumanly fast and reached the bedroom door before he even had a chance to catch up with her. Just as Will managed to stop by the door with the act of sliding on the floor the last couple of meters, it slammed shut right in front of her. From the inside Will, could hear her mother's shouting and scream for help. Will rushed forward to grab the doorknob and tried to open the door but it was locked. Without hesitating, she tightened her fists and slammed them right through the doorframe, grabbed the door, tore it off lock and hinges and threw it into the wall behind her as she ran inside.

Inside the room, she could see her mother with a terrified look on her face being dragged under the bed, only her head and arms was free as she tried to hold onto the bed while the rest of her had disappeared into the darkness. In a single motion, Will jumped forward to her desperate mother, took a strong hold on her arms and with all her strength pulled her back. Whatever sort of creature that had been trying to pull Susan under the bed, clearly hadn't expected someone being able to pull her back with such strength. Will heard the sound of ripping clothes and felt that her mother no longer was being dragged in the other direction. She hurried to pull out her mother, and after a split second, Will was able to get a new grip at her mother and drag her up from the floor. Will lifted up Susan who lay like a frightened child in her arms.

" _ **What happened?**_ **"** Dean screamed, rushing in behind her, just far enough behind that he avoided being knocked down by the brutally opened door a moment earlier. Susan who was curled together in her daughter's arms looked at the bed and screamed with tears in her eyes, "There is something under the bed who tried to take me!"

"Here," said Will and turned to Dean, _"_ Take mom." With that, she lifted her mother over to Dean who automatically stretched out his arms to catch her. Dean was probably not prepared enough to hold up his wife in his arms because as fast as Will let go of her mother, Dean's knees bended under Susan's weight. Will however, had never let the bed out of her sight and before Dean or Susan could say anything more, she ran to the bed, took hold on it and sent the bed flying into the wall a couple of meters besides them. Her fist was ready to hit anything that may lie hidden there.

Everybody stared in silence, but nothing was to be seen where the bed had stood only a second before.

"I swear! There was something there that tried to pull me under," cried Susan and looked to both Will and Dean, "You must believe me!"

Dean had never seen his wife, or anybody else, in such a state of fear and shock before, but he held his composure, "Take it easy my dear, we do believe you, but whatever it was, it is not there anymore now."

"Look what it did to me!" Susan said and made a motion, signalizing to Dean to let her down. The moment Susan put her feet on the floor, both Will and Dean could see that her nightgown had been severally torn from her knees and down, both of her legs were bleeding from claw like marks that went down to her ankles.

"Will, what is going on?" her mother cried to her, "I know you know something, please don't lie to me."

Will stared back at her mother and stepfather for a moment, not sure what to say. "I, uhm," she begun, both Susan and Dean was staring at her in a mixture of shock and fear. "We are not alone here," she continued.

"What do you mean by not alone?" Dean followed up.

"You know what the old man outside the Inn said about people disappearing from here?" Will said, "Well, that was true, people have been disappearing from here for a long time, but he was wrong at one point. Their disappearance hasn't been without a trace, some have been found again, but it was never reported." Will then pulled out the pictures she had been carrying in a pocket on the robe the entire time. Susan and Dean took the pictures and paled at once they understood what they were looking at, they were about to say something but Will was quicker.

"Look, I will tell you everything I know later, but please, let us get out from here first." She said with desperation in her voice. Secrets be secrets, but her family mattered more, unfortunately, her parents only looked dumbfounded at her. " _ **NOW**_ " she yelled with all the authority she had learned as a guardian. The reaction was immediate.

"I will go and get William, you get on some warm clothes," Dean said to his wife and rushed out and into Will's room.

Just a moment later, Dean came rushing in to them again, "Will, where is William?" he said out of his breath.

"Is he not lying in his bed?" said Will and instantly feared the worst.

"No I can't find him!" Dean said. Will ran past him and into the other room, her parents tight on her heels. Inside she could immediately see her brother wasn't in his bed. She ran over to it and pushed it out of her way, but there was nothing there. She took a quick look in the cabinet and the tiny closet but found nothing else but some few of her spare clothes, the window was also shut. Susan and Dean looked sickly pale where they stood.

"William, where are you?" Susan cried.

"I will go and look at the living room and kitchen," said Dean, "Perhaps he is there."

"I will look into the living room." Susan said almost crying.

"No," said Will, and spoke in a voice that sounded slow and drained of life, "I think I know exactly where he is, and that is not the kitchen or anyplace up here." She then looked down at the floor underneath. Dean and Susan lowered their gaze too watch the floor, neither of them said anything because they immediately understood what she was thinking.

Without a word, Will marched out of the room with quick steps. Her parents were silent but they followed suit.

Will felt the guilt starting to build up inside her. " _I should never have left William alone. I knew there was something dangerous hiding here, and still I left him. Why him? If he has been hurt or worse…, I will never forgive myself for it._ "

Right now however, she could only hope, but for her mother's and Dean's sake she had to be strong as they were probably far more scared than her, not knowing at all what was happening.

After quickly walking a few meters, Will got a strange feeling that the dark corridor became longer and longer. She turned the corner, it was like everything in front of her was stretched out and disappeared into a black fog. The end was nowhere to be seen. Will ran faster and faster, but the way towards the basement door seemed never to end. She could hear hands hammering on the closed doors and voices screaming and begging for help from inside the rooms she passed, which made it seem even longer. Or was it only in her mind she could hear them? Her panic and despair began mixing with a rising anger. No one and nothing that dared to kidnap her brother would get away with it, and with that though the screaming stopped and the spell that seemingly had taken a hold on her was lifted. At last, she could see the end.

After what felt like an eternity, she found herself in front of the last door of the corridor. The old wooden door looked threatening with its broad timber and iron fittings. She let out a breath of momentary relief as she waited for Dean and Susan to catch up with her. When they did, she turned her head to face her parents and said, "I think it is safest for the two of you to stay here. I will go alone."

"No! We will come with you," Dean said and her mother joined with a shaky voice, "I won't go anywhere without William, what if he has been harmed?"

"I think," said Will to her mother with a voice that was calm, but also filled with authority, "That the main goal was not to take William, but to lure us down when whatever attacked couldn't get you. Are you sure you will come?"

"Yes, and you can't say anything to persuade us from it!" Susan said and looked first at her daughter and then to her husband who nodded in support, her eyes still shone of terror, but she wouldn't give in to it.

Will eventually gave in, not wanting to delay it anymore, "Alright, I will let you come, but I warn you, you have seen nothing yet!" Then she added in her thought, " _And I honestly don't look forward to when you do._ " With that, she opened the basement door, walked inside and down the stairs.

This time, there was no light because neither of them had in their hurry thought of bringing with them a flashlight. Dean and Susan held onto each other as they walked behind Will down the stairs, none of them could see anything in this darkness, but they somehow managed to find the door that led into the first basement.

"It's too dark", Dean said, "We can't see anything at all, we must find the switch if we are going to find him."

"It's no use," said Will, "The light don't work down here, and it probably haven't for years."

"What do you mean?" Dean said, "You turned it on yesterday."

"No, I didn't," she said, "This is what I did!" " **Lights on** " she commanded, and at once, all lamps in the room sprang to life in an instant. Susan and Dean jumped at the sudden change of light, and when they had calmed enough to look at Will, what they saw was far from what they had been expecting.

Standing in front of them with the back turned towards them was not the robe-clad girl they had followed down to the basement, in her place was a red headed adult in strange violet and green clothes and with huge semi-transparent fairy wings on her back.

"Will?" she heard her mother gasped "is that you?" she turned her head and looked back at her frightened, and now probably shell-shocked parents. "I thought that if there comes to a fight, the old robes would probably only be a hinder," she said and gave them half a nervous smile.

Neither Susan nor Dean said a word, but their bulging eyes told her, _that_ probably wasn't going to last forever so she hurried up and started walking towards the door at the other side of the huge room. The light was still as bad as last time, but now she wanted more, "More light!" She said and heard two yelps from her parents when several tiny high pitched voices started to speak from different places in the basement;

"Cant shine more." "Will break!" Sorry Miss Will," and "Then I will go black."

Two shocked faces told her a quick explanation was necessary, "Don't worry, it is only the lightbulbs who speaks. You see, everything with an electrical spark springs to life when I talk to them." She only got stares back at here, yes, she was in for an explanation later, she just knew it.

They went further into the scrap-filled room until they were facing the only other door in the basement. The door Susan had closed so carefully the day before stood now open and invited them to look inside...


	11. Chapter 11

**Hello again. A new chapter is up and ready. I hope you will leave some reviews so I know what you think so far, and to you who already have, thank you very much, I really appreciate it : )**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

Will went first, closely followed by Dean and Susan. Nobody said anything when they finally gathered around the door and looked inside. There was a narrow strip of light that cut through the dark room, and it ended right in front of the mysterious wardrobe. But in the middle, right between them and the eerie wardrobe at the end of the light, lay William seemingly still asleep, but maybe unconscious or worse...

"William"

Susan shouted and tried to walk into the room and get him, but Will reached out her arm and stopped her.

"Don't" Will told her mother firmly.

"But William is there, I must get him." Susan said desperately.

"Susan dear," said Dean and looked at her, "I think perhaps it is best we trust Will to do this, she seems to knows more of this than we do." Having said this he looked back at his winged stepdaughter who gave him a confirming nod.

"You two stay here while I will go and get him", she said, "and…" what more Will was going to say was abruptly cut short as the light started to flicker and went off.

"Will" two scared voices cried behind her, but before Will had the time to do anything, the light went on again.

The first thing they saw was that William still lay on the same spot as a second earlier, then they all stared around themselves to see if something suddenly had turned up. It was Dean, who spoke first this time. "Is it just my imagination," he said. "Or does the wardrobe seemed to have moved a bit forward?"

Everyone's full attention turned to the wardrobe and Will said, "No, it is not your imagination. Now the wardrobe stands fully in the narrow strip of light, it didn't five seconds ago."

Will made herself ready to run inside to get her brother when the old lamps started to flicker again and went off one more time.

The light came back almost as fast as it had disappeared, but now the wardrobe stood even closer to William, and Will calculated that by the next time the light would go off, it would be right in front of him and she made herself ready. The light flickered again and it went dark…

The light turned on again quite fast, and to Dean's and Susan's surprise, Will who had stood right in front of them a second before, sat now on the floor and embraced her little brother while staring face to face at the wardrobe. Will felt her brother breath calmly so he was most likely unhurt from what had happened to him, but if he woke up there certainly were going to be a lot of tears and screaming. But most importantly, if she needed to fight, William would be in danger, therefore she needed him out of the way. Behind her, Susan and Dean took a few steps into the room to see for themselves.

"Mom, dad" she said gravely, never letting her eyes wander from the object standing only a meter in front of her, "I want you to take William and get yourself out of here now. Take the car and drive home." And before either of the adults could respond, she made swift motion with her fingers and created a tiny silvery sphere that teleported her brother out of her arms and right into her mother's. By the sound of the couples surprised reaction she was sure she had succeeded. Will allowed herself to take a quick look over her shoulder and see that William indeed was safe in her mother's arms.

"Will, we have him, come back here now," said Dean, trying to persuade her to get away herself. She was about to tell them to leave without her when she heard the terrible sound of a creaking door that begun to open.

The door on the right side of the wardrobe started to slide open and an eerie black fog started to seep out down to the ground and spread out in front her, swallowing what little light there was on the floor. Only a few centimeters of the door had opened before something darker started to stretch out. It was a hand. A black hand that was so thin that it was almost nothing to hide the crooked bones and tendons under the skin. The fingers were unnaturally long and thin and ended in claw like nails at the end. Will jumped back on her feet and into battle stance and shouted, " _ **RUN.**_ "

But just as her parents were going to turn around and flee, the door behind them slammed again and the room laid once more in total darkness. None could see anything, but they could hear the wardrobe door that opened more.

"Oh no, don't you dare trying this one on me," Will said, "I strongly prefer to see who… and what… my opponent is!" And with that, Will created two huge spheres of crackling bluish-white energy from both her palms that floated in the air and enlightened the entire basement and everyone who was there. Now she could see more of what was coming out from the wardrobe.

Out from the half-opened door, a black and gray human like figure stretched its upper body. The head was bald and could have been a human's, but where the eyes should have been, there were only two empty pits of darkness. The face was as skinny as seen on people who had suffered from famine, the skin lay tight and highlighting every tendon that were attached to the bones. The neck was long and thin, and ended in a torn tunic that had the same dark grey color as the rest of the thin body. There seemed to be a black fog that lay tightly around the entire creature, making it look like a creature from hell. It was a being born out of the worst nightmare.

Nobody moved or dared to breathe when it craned it's neck and looked first at Will with its empty eyes, then at her parents who by now was scared beyond belief. If that wasn't enough, William had begun to waken and would certainly make a very unwelcome scream when he saw what was going on.

Dean was the first one to move, he took a slowly step backwards, turned around and tried to open the door behind in order to get them out, but as he tried to pull it open, he realized it was stuck.

"The door is locked, it won't open," he said while he desperately alternating tried to pull and push the door open with all his might. The noise of her stepfather speaking while trying to tear down the door broke the silence and got the attention of everybody. The nightmarish creature turned its attention to the people behind here, forgetting Will for a brief second. Will took the opportunity to jump aside so she no longer stood face to face with the demon, turned to her parents and screamed, " _ **MOVE!**_ "

Dean and Susan reacted quickly and moved from the door just in time to see Will shoot a lightning bolt from her hand that blew the door to pieces. "Get out of here, I will handle this." Her little demonstration had obviously been enough to make the adults obey, and with a screaming William, they ran out from the room and through the other basement.

The corps looking figure now sprang out from the closet, looking at Will with an understanding that this was a threat it newer had experienced before. Now, as she could see the entire thing fully, she saw that the tunic continued down to its black legs, but most of it was torn to shreds or had rotten away centuries ago. Will had seen her fair share of zombie films, she didn't like them, Irma however, had insisted that they were cool, but this one made the zombies looking quite healthy in comparison. Its speed was an entirely another matter. It moved fast and aimed directly at Will who only had half a moment to prepare herself. The impact sent her flying along the floor, her wings whirling up a lot of earth and dust as she slide. Before Will thought to open her eyes again, she felt some long, cold fingers grab around her neck and tighten. She opened her eyes and looked into two black holes that stared back at her. Being this close up, she noticed that around its mouth the skin was so stretched that it made it seem that its dead lips were frozen into an eternal smile.

Will however, had no plan to study the close up facial features as she was beginning to run out of air. She lifted her arms and grabbed the sickly thin limbs that was holding her and sent an enormous amount of electricity into them.

The demon lost its grip on her and fell on the ground with a smoky halo around it, but it was only for a moment. It rose again, but before it could do anything else, Will shot another lightning bolt and hit. The creature got a nasty shock but was soon back on its legs and lunged at her. She skillfully blocked the first punch but the other came as a surprise and struck her low on the stomach and she fell backwards. Lying on her back she saw the nightmarish creature jump at her with its claw-like fingers spread, ready to tear her apart. Fortunately, years of fighting had given her a lot of experience. As the creature came flying towards her, she waited until it the last possible moment, bended her knees and used his momentum to kick him back again.

Now it was her turn to attack and Will stretched her wings, within a moment she was airborne and was flying towards the ugly creature with her right fist crackling with electrical power.

The momentum of her attack was so great that only a dark shadow was seen flying backwards the moment after her fist made contact. With a sickening crack it smashed into the hard stonewall on the other side of the room, making cracks appear and dust falling down from the ceiling. There it slumped down and didn't move.

Will started to walk slowly against the creature, the impact was hard but she doubted she had managed to kill it, she had met too many monsters that could take a few good hits and rise again like nothing. She stopped two meters before the creature and studied it for a moment, what should she do? Take it to Kandrakar and ask Yan Lin what to do? Surely, she could tell her how to get rid of it. She quickly decided that option was most likely the best; if nothing else, they could keep it safely locked away for a very long time.

She was going to pull out the heart so she missed the swift movement coming from the demon, and the next thing she knew she was flying without the use of her wings. Will felt herself collide with something, but it wasn't a hard a hard stonewall as she had expected, but something that easily shattered on her impact. As she quickly came to her senses, she understood it was the old wardrobe she had collided with, and now, pieces of planks, junk and old torn clothes lay scattered under her and throughout in the basement. Having withstood worse attack than this, the guardian rose quickly again, but the skinny figure didn't came after her. Instead it just stood there and stared. Then it opened its mouth, revealing two rows of deadly sharp teeth and let out a deafening scream before it seemed to dissolve in a black fog and disappear, leaving her alone in the creepy cellar.

"Why? Where are you going, come back here and fight!" She screamed, not understanding why it would disappear so suddenly.

Will looked around herself to see if it had reappeared, but saw nothing. It was first now that she could see that apart from the crushed wardrobe and its scattered contents, there was nothing else in this room. She took a step forward, prepared to run upstairs to join her parents when she promptly stumbled over an old piece of cloth and fell on her nose.

"Great," Will said to herself as she rose again," I can see the headlines; Guardian of The Infinite Universes Defeated by a Rotten Piece of Clothing!" She was going to ignore it and continue when she saw something laying under it. Will hurried to remove the cloth and broken pieces of wood, pottery and other scrap to see what it could be.

It was a book, not a fancy one and perhaps just a couple of decades old, nothing was written on the cover so Will opened it to have a quick look inside. It was a diary, and from the look of it, it seemed to have belonged to the infamous Mr. Henderson. Being short on time, she decided to take it with her and read it later. Now she had to find her parents and little brother, hoping nothing else had found them first.


	12. Chapter 12

**Hello again. New week, new chapter and once again I would like to thank to those who have given me great reviews, I hope you will continue with that. This time I will focus a little more on Dean and Susan, it can't be easy for them taking in all that has happened so far. How does two rational and perfectly normal adults handle this?**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

Susan and Dean were running in panic through the basement, trying not to stumble and fall over anything that was there. Something the dim light didn't make easy. "Do you think Will be okay in there?" a scared Susan said to Dean as she jumped over an old sack on the floor with William crying in her arms.

"I honestly don't know Susan, but from what she did to the door, I am sure she isn't defenseless. She turned out to be quite a grown woman from what I can tell. She shot lightning and even got wings. I had no idea that Will could do that," Dean said to his wife.

"I had no idea about this either, and I who though I knew my daughter," Susan whispered not really knowing what to think. They ran past some large chests and Dean said as he jumped, "Perhaps we should trust Will to know what she is doing, she is after all your daughter."

"Our daughter," Susan said.

"Our daughter" Dean quickly corrected himself. "Think about it. It can't have been easy for her either, hiding this for us for who knows for how long time. I am positive that when all this is over and we all are safely out of here, we will get a perfectly rational explanation." Susan didn't say anything so Dean added "At least as long the word rational goes in this case."

They came to the door leading out to the stairway that would take them up and out from here. The stair room was dark, but not as pitch dark as when they came. Because from behind them the dim light, turned on by Will's magic, casted enough light to highlight outlines on the stair. Therefore, without slowing down they climbed the stairs at full speed.

Upstairs, the corridor was still dark because no one had thought of turning on any light when they raced down to the basement. Outside it was still night so nothing but a weak light came from the windows, just enough to see the world in grey and black. "What shall we do know?" Susan asked Dean.

"We run into our room and grab some warm clothes, a flashlight and try to get outside. We will wait for Will there and have the car ready in case we need to get away fast." Dean said, trying to be rational. Both looked over their shoulders when they heard crashes coming from the basement and feared the worst, but they continued.

They rushed into the bedroom and turned on the light inside and got what they needed, but while Susan shifted to some more outdoor clothes he noticed her legs, "Susan, you are still bleeding!" Susan looked first at her husband and then down at her legs that were soaked in blood and said.

"Yes I am, but there are no time to treat that now, it will have to wait for later."

"But."

"No, I can manage it. I will take William while you turn on the lights in the corridor when we pass the switch. You got it?"

Not being one to question his wife, Dean said yes and then they ran outside. When they came to the living room area they passed a switch that enabled Dean to turn on the light for this part of the corridor and all the way out to the entrance hall. The effect of the light was immediate; the corridor didn't seem so scary anymore, and that gave them courage to run further. Susan managed to calm William down such that he didn't make so much noise anymore.

The reception area was without light, but the light from the corridor behind them reached far enough to see well enough and Dean got his flashlight working too. They passed the reception desk and hurried toward the great wooden double doors that led out from the asylum. Dean reached the door first, stuck the key in the lock and turned it around. But when he tried to open the door it wouldn't bulge any more than the door he had tried to open in the basement a little earlier.

"What is wrong with the doors in this house?" said Dean as he franticly tried to push the door open. But the old door was stuck as if somebody had put a bolt on it, this was far beyond what he could handle.

"Let's try opening a window instead," Susan suggested and ran towards one a couple of meters to the left of the entrance.

Dean hurried over to her and began taking of the hooks that locked the window in its place, but when they were off the window wouldn't move that either. "Maybe it's just hard to open, try pull harder," said Susan to Dean. Dean tried again, but, "No. It is completely stuck. Just wait a moment." With that he ran away from the window and disappeared behind the reception desk. He came back a short moment later with a wooden chair in his hands.

"Watch out, I will try to break it," he said. Susan moved away to protect herself and her child from what was coming.

Dean held on to the back of the chair and smashed it against the window. A load crack was heard but it came from the chair, not the window. _"_ What!" he exclaimed, and tried to hit the window over again, but after just three attempt the chair he was holding fell apart.

"Maybe we should go looking for another exit?" said Susan nervously.

"No," Dean breathed, "If we can't open neither the door or the window in this room, I seriously doubt it will be possible any other place either."

"Shall we wait for Will here then, and hope she will be able to handle this?" said Susan.

"That might be the best idea," Dean answered and leaned his back against the wall. None said anything, and even William was quiet. The noise from the basement had stopped and no sound came from the long corridor they had come from.

Susan turned her head around and looked to the dark left corridor that led to the other wing. "Or perhaps not," she whispered as she saw a thin slip of black smoke started to seep up from the cracks between the planks on the floor.

A very short moment later, they found themselves up in the hallway on the third floor. "What shall we do now?" asked Susan.

"We can try to find a room to hide in, maybe there is a room with a broken window somewhere?" a panting Dean said.

"But I can't recall that any of the rooms we have been looking into have had anything broken," said Susan.

"Then let us at least find a room where we can stay inside while we catch our breath," suggested Dean.

"Just one condition, I want a room with two doors just in case."

They eventually found such a room, even though it wasn't easy in the dark because none of them dared to try to turn on the light in the corridor, signalizing where they were. It was an office of some kind with one door leading directly out to the corridor and the other one leading into the neighboring room, which also had another door that led into the corridor.

Dean found himself a chair and sat down on it and let his breath out, "I hope we will be safe her for a little while," he said to his wife and made a gesture to make her sit down too.

"I also," she said, "But what about Will? We left her alone to face that monster for herself, and now it was coming up from the floor. I hope she isn't hurt or worse." The last was said in a shaky voice that had almost cracked.

Dean was still for a little moment, but eventually turned to Susan, "I am afraid I know very little to do right now. I stopped to believe in the boogeyman when I was twelve I think, so as an adult I find this situation rather unusual. Perhaps he will go up in smoke if I try to point the flashlight at him, or maybe he will go away if we close our eyes?"

"Seeing what happened to the people on the pictures Will showed us, I don't think that would be a smart move. I'd prefer hit him with a bat a couple of times" Susan said brutally, thinking to protect her little son "Do you see anything in here we could use to defend us if he shows up?"

Having nothing better idea, Dean stood up and started to look around in the dark room. Perhaps there would be something here they could use in an emergency. He looked carefully around not to accidently knock anything over or any make noise. Eventually he found a large wrench in a drawer and a broomstick in a corner, Susan got the broomstick, and Dean kept the heavy wrench for himself. Then they sat down again.

They sat in silence for a while, listening for any sounds. When they didn't hear anything, Susan let out a sight, looked at her weapon and said "I can't help but think that sitting here with a broom and a wrench to defend ourselves, we are terrible ill equipped for what we are up against. This whole thing seem just surreal to me."

"Don't forget my dear, that more than once in battles, it have been the psychological belief in a victory that have won the battle, not the strength of the weapons." Said the history teacher trying to cheer up his wife, and himself.

He let his fingers play with his mustache for a moment before he asked _; "_ Are you angry with Will for not telling you?"

Susan looked at him, "I don't know yet, I am too scared and confused right now. I am sure she had her reasons for not telling anyone. Who knows what she really have been doing all this time, do I really know here anymore?"

Dean put his hand around Susan and gave her a hug, "Have faith in Will, she is big enough to take care of herself, probably better than you and me right now. You know, I asked her if she wanted to practice driving home after we had finished here, but I also said I had to ask you first. You still have a say in that matter."

She let out a huff and smiled a little to herself when she said, "She could have gotten the driver license already if she wanted to. She is both old and skilled enough to drive. But if she can do what she did to William down in the basement, teleporting I guess it was, I understand that she has no hurry getting it."

"Look at the bright side of it," said Dean, "If she can teleport and want to transport herself that way, you don't have to be afraid that she want to have a motorbike when she gets older."

Susan smiled a genuine smile and was happy that Dean was such a nice guy who could see the best in everyone. She was just about to reply when they suddenly heard a noise from the corridor.

Dean put his finger to his lip and looked to his wife and child and they immediately kept still, no one dared to say anything or breathe as they heard the creaking sound of footsteps coming closer and closer.

"Mom? Dad? Are you inside?"


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

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Will was running through the basement. She didn't fly because she would have ended up crashing into approximately everything on her way. That smoke filled cadaver had slipped away from her and she feared it would try to target her parents and brother instead. She herself didn't fear the demon that much anymore, yes she could rank it on top three of the most horrifying beings she had encountered so far as a guardian, but he had lost his element of surprise when he had finally shown himself. The nightmarish figure scared her the most as long as he had remained unseen, now she was confident she could give it a good old beating. What she feared now was what it could do to her family who were defenseless against a supernatural creature.

With only the thoughts of finding her parents in mind before the demon did, she rushed out and up from the cellar, the stairs were done in three long steps. She rushed out into the first half of the corridor that lay bathed in darkness, but from around the corner at the end of it she could see that somebody had turned on the lights. As there was no hindrance here, and the distance from wall to wall was just wide enough, she unfolded the wings on her back and flew with great speed towards the light. She rounded the corner so fast that she only escaped a collision with the wall thanks to years of flying experience.

As she came closer to the bedrooms she slowed down to look inside to be sure no one was there, she did the same when she passed the living room and the kitchen. No one was to be seen, so she hoped they had managed to get out of the house unharmed. However, when Will entered the hall, she understood something was wrong. She had expected the main door to be open, but instead she found it still closed and under a window close by was a broken chair.

"Oh-oh," Will said loudly to herself, it seemed they had tried to break through the window. Why would that be? She landed by the door and tried to open it, but found it stuck. Then she ran up to the window, took one of the broken chair legs and tried to smash the window. It was like hitting a solid wall. The demon must had sealed the house to prevent anyone from escaping from it.

" _No no no_ ," she thought, " _Where could mom and Dean have gone, surely they must have tried to find another way out, where should I look_?" Will nearly panicked again before a tiny voice in the back of her mind said, " _Hey, get a grip on yourself girl, stay still and try to listen for them, they must be around somewhere._ "

Will stood completely still for a short moment and hold her breath while she tried to listen for any noise that could tell her about her parents whereabouts. After fifteen second without hearing anything, she couldn't stand still anymore, she spun around and sprinted into the left wing calling for her mother and Dean.

* * *

It was Will's voice that spoke.

"Mom? Dad? Are you inside?"

Both Dean and Susan let go of their breath, Will had come looking for them so they stood up to let her inn. Susan took William out of her lap and sat him down on the chair, perhaps they would be able to get an explanation for what was going on.

Susan watched Dean lay down the wrench on the desk and went to unlock the door, what would she say to her daughter? She couldn't help feeling angry and disappointed. Will had been holding secrets for her about herself, all the times she had snuck out of the house and came back often late at night with lame excuses. Was it this kind of things she went out for, and put herself in danger without letting her know? What if she didn't come back one day, would she ever know what happened to her daughter? Her thought went to earlier this night when she had been thinking on how to confront Will with her suspicions and all the strange things that went on, and then a thought suddenly struck her like a ton of bricks.

Dean had unlocked the door and had started pulling it open when he heard his wife yell, " **STOP**!" Then within a fraction of a second, two things happened simultaneously;  
The first was that the door he had been opening was unexpectedly forced completely open from the outside so it nearly hit him.  
The second was that Susan came running up from behind him, holding the top of his chair over her head and smashed it hard down on the person that stood on the other side of the door.

"CRASH"

From behind William started to scream. "Susan what the h…" Dean didn't finish the sentence, because when he was able to comprehend what had happened, he saw that it wasn't Will who was in the hallway. Down on the floor with a broken chair on its head lay a bone-thin humanoid figure on its back with black smoke hovering around and a scared Susan standing over it.

Susan didn't hesitate, she turned on her heel, ran back inside the room again and shouted, "Lock the door, lock the door!" too her husband.

The creature was fast however, just before Dean had shut the door after Susan, four dark claws got in between the door and the doorframe, preventing it from shutting completely. Dean pushed against the door with all his might, hoping it would at least hurt the bony fingers enough to make the demon pull them back, but to no avail.

Susan had barely lifted her crying child from his chair when she heard, "Susan, get….oohhff!" She turned her head around and saw the door burst open, showing the tall demon standing there in the dark. Its evil black and bottomless eyeholes looked at them with invisible eyes, then it flung itself at Dean who had fallen on the floor when the door burst open.

Dean had barely time to understand what happened as he slammed down on his back on the floor. The first thing he knew was a pain that shot through his back, and when he opened his eyes he saw a bony creature from a childhood-nightmare flung down on him and pressed him hard to the floor.

Dean tried desperately to get himself loose as he felt his sweat blended with his fear and tried to think of a way to throw it off, but the demon held him pinned down. Close up to it, Dean could see its tight facial skin was frozen into an awfully smile that revealed a long row of sharp teeth, and it smelled of old decaying flesh. He was going to yell that Susan had to get herself away when he felt a blow strike him and left him without a breathe. Only a painful gasp escaped his lips as his vision started to blur.

Susan screamed as the creature threw itself at Dean, but as she was holding the crying William in her arms she couldn't do anything. She saw her husband trying to get loose and say something when suddenly one of its hands planted itself in his stomach and Dean's futile tries to escape came to a halt. The wicked creature took hold on her husband's neck with a black hand and started to tighten its grip and Dean started to choke. Susan was too scared to do anything else but stare in panic, in her arms William howled worse than he had ever done before.

Its bald and skull-like head moved slowly to look at the terrified Susan, perhaps it tried to grin at her, but it was impossible to tell because its tight lips and tendons already gave it a dreadful smile. Then it lifted its other hand and purposely showed her his long thin fingers so she could see the sharp claws at the end of the fingertips, and she understood they really could be used to cut someone open. A hoarse sound, low and unbidden, began to emerge from the creature's throat; Susan thought it almost sounded like laughter. Then she closed her eyes and screamed…

A sudden crash and an angry outburst coming from the floor made her open her eyes again. "Get your sorry ass away from Dean!"

Will laid on the floor next to her stepfather and wrestled with the eerie demon, throwing him punches and kicks that must have broken several bones it its seemingly fragile body.

"Mom, how is Dean?" Her daughter shouted as she delivered another punch to its face.

Susan rushed over to Dean with a hysterical William in her arms to see if he was still alive. "He is breathing, but he was hit hard on his stomach, I don't know how serious it is."

"You are so paying for this." Will yelled to the demon and used her leg to kick flat on its chest. The creature however caught it and tried to use its claws to slice her leg open, but the material of her clothes prevented it. She jerked back her foot and threw herself on the floor in front of him. Acting quickly she took hold on one of its legs, threw herself around and sent it flying so hard into the wall behind her that tapestry and bricks came tumbling down upon it.

A load gasp from Dean was heard and he opened his eyes again, "I am fine, he just knocked the air out of me." He said with a sore voice and put a hand on his throat to check if he really spoke the truth. Finding it to be in order he then put his hands under himself and tried to rise up.

Susan took hold on her child in one arm and used her other to drag Dean up to his feet again. A little behind them the demon also dug itself out from the rubble and flung towards Will while she tried to block the incoming attack. But she failed and got a nasty punch in the stomach that sent _her_ flying into the opposite wall. A loud smack was heard as Will's back connected to the brick wall, Dean and Susan cried as they saw this happened.

"Will, are you alright?" shouted the couple as they saw their daughter fall down from the wall, leaving quite a mark after where she struck it. To their relief and not so little surprise, the answer came rather quickly and undisturbed.

"Don't worry, I have taken worse hits than this."

The creature didn't waste time. Before she could stand up it attacked her again, but Will raised her hand quickly and shoot a lightning bolt that momentarily stunned the entity. Then she pushed herself up, let a couple of loose bricks slide down one of her wings and brushed some dust and cement out of her fire-red hair. She looked at Dean and Susan and suddenly let a smile shine on her face, "I will not let him harm you, so don't be afraid. Just stay close to me and I will protect you." Then she caught eye on Dean who was clutching his stomach and sheepishly corrected herself, "At least no more harm from now on, you sure everything is okay Dean?"

"Yes, truly, I am fine I am only out of my breathe, and no broken bones. WHATCH OUT!"

A blur of black fog and ragged clothes seemingly flew through the air, this time towards William and Susan.

Instinctively, Will sent a wave of radiating magic from her hands, creating an impregnable barrier to protect her mom and brother.

Without bulging a millimeter, the barrier effectively withstood the creature as the hellish being smashed into it a second later and fell to the floor. It stood up again and tried to move away.

This time the creature was obviously hurt too, and far more than Will because it stood not as tall anymore, but somewhat more bent. Again, it let out a deafening shriek and the smoke started to cover him. Causing Susan, Dean and William to cover their ears to shut out the infernal noise. "Oh no, not this time!" Will yelled and jumped towards it with her fist already on its way to give the monster another blow. But she was just too late, her right fist slammed through the smoke and straight through the wall behind and into the hallway on the other side.

"Coward, come back here and fight!" she yelled when she understood it had escaped her again.

* * *

Someplace deep under the old asylum between thick walls, there are hidden corridors from the time of the monastery. Why they were built, nobody knew. Like empty veins in a body devoid of life, they stretches upwards and throughout the entire building, secretly connecting the various parts of the house with each other. Inside one of these, a lone figure shrouded in darkness and mystery lurked around for purposes unknown.

* * *

 **A/N. That was another chapter done and I was happy to learn that at least one of my reviewers, _ThePeridotRanger_ , had guessed right that it was not Will who was behind Dean's and Susan's door. I have tried through the various chapters to give some clues that it couldn't be Will. ****Did any other figure it out too?**

 **When I write this story, I try to somewhat stay close the characteres personality (the comic verson) and I remembered that in one comic issue, Susan try to encourage Will to call Dean, dad (after Susan and Dean have married of course). And about Will's strenght, she is usually shown as much stronger in the cartoon than in the comic, but it is also hinted off screen in the comics that she is very strong. She was among other things able to single handed take down several robots on her own when William had been kidnapped. But then again, I will blend some of her comic and cartoon powers to give her a big repertoar of abilities when needed.**

 **As for the other members of the W.I.T.C.H. gang, maybe they will make some sort of appearance, but you will have to wait and see.**


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

Dean was feeling somewhat better, he was breathing fine again and the stomach didn't hurt _that_ much, although he still could feel the cold claws around his neck. True enough he had just been face to face with a creature right from a horror movie and he was certain he was going to have nightmares about it for a long time, but better to have some really bad dreams than none at all. He looked first at Susan and William to be sure they were fine. Then he looked at Will who just pulled back her arm from the hole she had made in the wall, and as she did that, she folded her ehh… fascinating wings. Without taking his eyes of his stepdaughter, he asked Susan, "How did you know it was that thing, and not Will that was on the outside?"

This rather peculiar question got Will's attention, "What do you mean?"

Dean said, "As we were hiding in this room we thought we heard you calling on us from out in the corridor, but when I was going to open the door, your mother ran past me holding a chair over her head and struck the person on the other side before I understood what was going on. It turned out it wasn't you who had been calling us, but the creature you just beat up."

"But I was down on the first floor, looking for you there! Did you hear me calling for you all the way up here?"

"No, I think it was the creature that borrowed your voice to pretend it was you in order for us to open the door for it." Then Dean turned to his wife, "How did you know it was the creature and not Will?"

Susan still holding a sobbing William in her arms trying to calm him, answered, "Two things. Number one: Will call you almost always by name. Two: I remembered when I was following after Will earlier tonight, when I walked after her, the only sounds came from my own footsteps on the floor, Will for some reason didn't make any at all, let alone made she the floor creak. Right before we heard her voice on the outside, there was both footsteps and creaks that alerted about somebody's coming"

"That I never thought of," said Will as she looked at her parents. She knew her mom often had encouraged her to call Dean, dad, but it never felt entirely natural for her to do so and she always fell back to "Dean". Even after being guardian for years, there were still many things she didn't knew about her enchanted body. She tried to walk a few step towards the rest and concluded that she really didn't make any noises. "Ha, I guess you are right!" exclaimed Will, sounding a little surprised.

A long and awkward silence followed after this. None said anything but only stared at each other, her parents obviously waiting for an explanation while Will was at loss for how she should explain this as she never truly had prepared for it. In the end, her mother went towards the wall, sat down on the floor next to a window, and said, "Will. Could you please give us an explanation for all this and what happened tonight?"

Will facing Susan and Dean, suddenly looking very unsure and nervous, "I, uhm," Will began, "I am not really sure how to start this."

"Will, if you feel this is going to be a long story, perhaps you would rather like start with what is going on in this house. It is perhaps the most pressing issue right now, we can always talk about the other things later instead." Dean said while giving her a weak smile and trying to be understanding towards his stepdaughter.

"Thank you Dean," Will said, still not feeling entirely well about her situation. Luckily, her mother also seemed to be understanding and gave her an approval nod.

"As I already mentioned for you a little earlier, the story this crazy old man told about his place is real, people have been disappearing from this place, and I am sure you by now can guess the cause behind that."

"But how did you know this?" said Susan.

"I didn't, I also thought it was some sort of joke until Annett gave me reason to think otherwise."

Dean looked at her, "Who is Annett?"

"Oh, Annett is the TV, she really doesn't work and haven't done so the last thirty years. That's why you couldn't turn her on. I think she said her cable is broken or something like that. Anyway, she told me she had heard people had begun disappearing from this place after Mr. Henderson started to work here, and that he and you aunt had been seen come and go at strange times. She didn't know much because the asylum closed down just two years after she came. And not long thereafter, Mr. Henderson also disappeared one day, presuming never to be seen again."

"So did my aunt know about what was going on here?" said Dean and looked at Will for an answer.

"I honestly can't tell about her role in this, neither can I truly tell what role Mr. Henderson had either because I don't know yet. I only know that these things have happened here before because when I went looking for some answers myself, I found the books from the monastery period that told about similar happenings back then."

"And what did they say?" Susan said, still sitting beside the window.

"There was an old Indian legend about two tribes were one of them called upon a creature to take revenge on the other one, for something they had done. But when the creature had destroyed the other tribe, they couldn't control it so turned upon them and killed he who summoned it. Thereafter it terrorized the remaining tribe for years until someone managed to seal it into twelve objects. These objects were buried until the monks started to build a monastery right upon were they were hidden. It didn't take long after the monks had moved in before some of them began to disappear leaving no clues for their disappearances. However, one of the chief monks managed to learn about this legend one day and found the objects under the floor in the basement, which had sealed the demon."

"I can guess which basement that was," said Dean, as the history teacher in him suddenly taken a personal interests in this.

"Yes, but the monk also discovered that some of the objects had been broken so he repaired them. And to seal the demon back again he told some prayers from the bible, he wrote which it was, but I have no clue about that whatsoever. Anyhow, he seem to have been successful and hid those objects again, this time some place in the forest so nobody would find them, but as Annett told me, both Mr. Henderson and you aunt were seen coming back from odd trips in the forest… More I don't know about this, because when I was going to look for more clues, first mom came after and surprised me, then I met you in the kitchen and then all this happened."

Neither Susan nor Dean made any comments, but their faces gave her an understanding look, something that gave Will enough confidence to calm her nerves.

"So, this thing that have been chasing us is in fact the demon that somehow have been released?" Dean said, "Do you have any idea what it will do now?"

Will thought for a moment, "No, I am not sure what it is planning to do, but it seem to be restricted to this house for now because I can't find any evidence that people on the outside have been targeted."

Susan closed her eyes for a moment and sighted before she opened them again and looked hopefully at Will, "Do you know what to do, I certainly do not. Can you seal it again or send it back to where it once came from?"

"Hmm," Will murmured before she started to speak slowly, "Sealing it would only be a temporary solution and I frankly know little about how it was done in the first place. I am sure I can do it someway, but sending it back home would be better, though it will be difficult since I have absolute no idea which world the creature came from."

The last statement caught Dean's and Susan's attention "Which world?" they both said simultaneously and looked at each other before Dean continued, "You mean there are more worlds? Like planets or do you mean universes?"

"Yep! Both in fact. There are an infinite number of worlds and universes, not to mention dimensions and other strange places." Will said and smiled weakly as she put a finger close to her lips and gazed up to the ceiling as looking for an answer there, "But I can't remember I have seen anyone that this creature might have come from."

After this came to Dean and Susan's knowledge, another silence followed, but fortunately not as awkward as the last one, and it lasted until Will took the word again as she knew what was on their minds.

"Well, long story made short, it has become my duty to travel to other places/worlds to help people living there to solve their problems, usually magical problems or something that may cause havoc in other worlds if it come out of control." She said carefully, not sure how her parents was going to react.

"Ok," said Susan equally slowly and added, "So when things like this happened, it is your job to solve it. Are you doing this on your own or do you have company?"

"Yes, it is my job and duty, but I wouldn't change it for all in the world, because I share it with my best friends. We are W.I.T.C.H." Said Will and grinned.

"Are you witches?" Asked her mother,

"No, it's Will, Irma, Taranee, Cornelia and Hay Lin!" said Will proudly with emphasis on each of theirs initial.

"Oh, I was wondering when they would come into the picture" Susan said and allowed herself a tiny smile, at least her daughter was not alone in this. Besides, it also explained why she unexpectedly, sometimes just had to see her friends at every strange hour.

Will understood this could turn out to be the beginning of a long explanation, something she didn't want as long as the creature still was on the loose and nobody knew what it was going to do next. Therefor she said, "I guess you probably want to hear more, but please, let us wait until later and rather try to find a way to deal with our immediate problem, like getting out of here or getting rid of the creature."

"You are right" said Dean and stood up again "let's try to do something."

"Maybe there are some clues in the book I found of what to do?" Will said to Dean.

Dean looked at Will, "What book?"

"You see, when I fought the creature in the basement, I was knocked into the wardrobe so hard that it broke, and out from it fell a book that seem to have been written by Mr. Henderson. I am positive that he must have written something there that can tell us what to do."

"So where is that book now?" asked Susan.

"I don't have it here; I think I must have dropped it when I heard you scream, so it has to be down on the first floor some place. I will go looking for it." With that, Will turned and walked to the door, but stopped and looked back at her parents to see what they were going to do, "Would you like to come with me or do you want to stay here and wait?"

Neither Susan nor Dean wanted to be left alone again, so Susan stood up and said, "We will come along and help you look for it, it would be bad if the creature came back again when you are not here. Neither of us are a match for it, but you seem to be more than capable enough to take care of him" She lifted up her son and then they went together looking for the book.

* * *

 **Now they have met the creature, but will they be able to learn more about it and what happened at the asylum before it shut down? Dean and Susan might seem relatively calm about all this so far but that is mostly because of fear and rationality. They are afraid and therefore won't do anything rash that can put them in more danger. They are rational about this because Dean and Susan know Will is the only one who has some knowledge about this and can save them, therefore they will not question her uneccessary (But Will is probably in for an explanation later...if they survive).**

 **How do you think so far? Please leave some reviews and tell me, and as always, thank to those of you who have.**


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

It was still late night so the corridor was very dark, the bad weather outside didn't help much either so Dean turned on his flashlight while Will created a dancing blue flame in her left hand. They didn't say much as they walked down the stairs, the dark shadows crated by their lights felt dense and threatening as if something lurked inside them. Will, Susan, William and Dean had reached the second floor when a sound made them all jump. It was a soft thump as if something fell down, and it came from the direction on the third floor where they just had been. Nobody dared to move, but all looked up to see if something came after them. Due to the nature of Will's light, she couldn't make it shine brighter in one direction so Dean pointed his flashlight towards the entrance above them. They waited, but nothing appeared.

"Do you think it was the creature?" Susan whispered to Will.

"It could have been," said Will, whispering back, "But I think it might have been some debris or bricks falling down from the wall in the room we just left, I did make some damage after all when I fought the creature."

They turned back again and Dean let his light sweep away from the third floor and pointed it back down the stairs. As they walked further on, it became clear when they passed some furniture or looked at their own shadows on the wall, that Will's living flame made every shadow jump and turn like dancing figures all around them. This made both Susan and Dean uneasy, even William seemed spooked by the dark figures that stretched and bended on the walls, eventually, Susan decided to speak.

"Will? Do you think you could turn on the lights here as you did in the basement? The shadows on the wall scares me; it is hard to tell if there is anything there or if it is just my imagination. And to be honest, it is quite scary when I know there truly is something out there."

"I agree," said Dean, "Besides, it would be much easier to see if the lights were on."

"No problem" Will said and spoke loudly to the lamps in the room, "Lights on please!" and the lights went on by themselves. Will tilted her head to see her parents and said rhetorically, "And do you know what the best thing is? It won't appear on the electricity bill!"

"I shall remember that when we are back home." Said Dean and smiled as he turned off his flashlight and stuffed it in his pocket.

With the lights shining, most of the shadows disappeared and only on places where no lamps where to be seen remained in darkness. They reached the first floor and the reception hall, from there on Will led them into the west wing where she said she had dropped the book. Unfortunately, there were less functional lamps there, but it was still enough to let them see without any other light source, and soon they found the room where Will had been when she heard her parents scream.

The door was open but there were no light inside so Will commanded them to turn on. It was a plain room of modest size and little furniture to fill it, but the book was there on the middle of the floor.

"Here it is," said Will and walked over to pick it up. "Now, let's see what the old man has written to us."

Her parents followed close behind. Dean carefully shut the door after him as he was the last one into the room.

"Do you think the book will give us any answers?" Dean asked curiously.

"We will find that out soon enough," said Will while she opened the book and started looking through the pages. The others found an old sofa covered by a white curtain and sat down on it. Will opted to stand at the middle of the floor, she found the beginning and started telling the story:

"Mr. Henderson writes that he bought this asylum in 1968, as in his own words; to renew the institute. He had been here before as a trainee and was highly educated and wealthy enough to take over it later…" Will skipped forward a couple of pages, "…. he seem to have been very skilled and worked on what he calls new methods to cure his patients, and he is quite interested in people who suffer from hallucinations, people who are traumatized and what he says; all sorts of fears!" Will lifted her head to look at her parents, "I understand that people can be hospitalized because of hallucinations and other things, but fear?"

Dean with his academic background decided to enlighten his stepdaughter, "Fear in this context usually means phobia. You know phobia like fear of highs, spiders, and some other animals, but there are also social phobia like fear of other people and crowds, others again can be fear of closed rooms and fear of darkness. Most people have a phobia of some sort at one point during their lives, but usually it is not that strong and it wear off as they grow older. However, sometimes a phobia can be so strong that it becomes a hindrance in a person's life and for the people around him. The traditional cure for those are to face their greatest fears and learn that there really is nothing to fear. But I find it strange that they take in those patients to an asylum, usually they are treated by specialists other places, does he write anything more about this?"

"Let's see," Will began to read more from the pages for herself until she spoke again," From what is written here, it seems the interest in fear is something personal and not something they treat here. His main work is treatment of hallucination and traumatization. He writes about their illness, it's suspected cause, how he treat them and the following results, quiet methodically."

Will read a couple of pages before she finally exclaimed "Hey, perhaps this is something?"

 _16\. October 1971._

 _I have for six month attempted to treat Mr. Carson for his hallucination, but he is despite all my effort not getting any better. When he first came here, his family told me he claimed to be able to see and speak to creatures that no one else could see, nothing special about that as far as I have met a fair share of those before. Usually they give up their fantasies after some talk and treatment, Carson however, refuse to end his illusions. I have spoken to him, given him the usual pills, electroshock therapy and the other usual means, but nothing works, today I therefore tried a different approach. In treatment of fear, you have to confront what scares you, Carson doesn't seem to fear his imaginative creatures, therefore I thought to give him a shock to let go of his illusions.  
Carson claim he can see creatures that somehow is connected to his feelings, if he fells happy, he see a creature that make him happy, if he is sad, he sees a creature that make him sad. My plan was to try to let him meet some of those in real life and show him afterwards that they weren't real. I went down to the basement to find some equipment when I discovered a small door I hadn't seen before. It was at the far end of the basement and led into another room that was empty and had no floor except from the bare soil further passages. The room had no windows or other light sources and gave off a creepy feeling; I decided there and then that I wanted to use it to scare Carson to see his reaction and observe how he would treat his creature. I also knew from experience that he was easy to scare. All I needed was some stuff from the other room to hide behind and some disguise to fool him into believing I was his imaginative creature, whereupon I afterwards would reveal it to be me. I found a wardrobe in the other room, managed to get it through the small door, and placed it in the middle of the room. Then I found a robe and made a frightening mask for myself to put on.  
When all was rigged and in place, I went to Carson's room and told him that I needed some help from him in the basement later that evening and asked him to come, and so he did.  
Later, right before he left his room, I hurried downstairs, put on my mask and robe, and hide in the wardrobe.  
I waited for five minutes before I heard the door into the room open and Carson walked in.  
He called on me, but I didn't say anything from inside the wardrobe. I heard he was approaching me as the sound of his footsteps came closer and stopped in front of the wardrobe.  
"Hello. Dr. Henderson are you here?" I heard him call. His voice sounded nervous but still I didn't say anything. He stood still for a little while because there was no sound from the outside, finally when I heard he started to walk back I began open the door.  
"Hello" I said with the most eerie voice I could muster, "Are you seeking someone?"  
The response was immediate as he spun around on his heel. "Who are you?" he said with a thin voice.  
"Who I am?" I said as I stepped out to reveal myself "Don't you recognize me?"  
"What do you want, I have never seen you before?" The man whispered as he stood frozen to the ground, probably frightened to his core.  
"What I want?" I proceeded with a haunting voice, "I want you to tell me who I am!"  
"Go away"  
I took a couple of steps forward and said again, "I am the one who always come in the night when the shadows reach your fantasies. We have met before."  
Carson was going to say something when he stopped breathing and just stared at me. He stared hard and it felt like he was looking through me at something behind. Seeing his face, I barely managed to avoid looking back myself and I was going to take a few steps further towards him. But as I did so, he suddenly started to run back to the door. However, he didn't make it through because in his hurry, and perhaps because of the dark, he swung the door open while he stood too close and hit himself hard in the head.  
Carson must have lost his conscious for a moment because he fell to the floor and didn't rise.  
Immediately I took off my mask, rushed to his side and knelt beside him. But when I did so, I had to turn around a little and got a glimpse of where I had been standing a second earlier. There, barely visible in the dark in front of the wardrobe it seemed to be an eerie dark shadow looking back at me.  
"Who are you?" I asked just like the unconscious Carson had asked me moments before.  
It was silent and I hardly expected any answer and I was sure it was the dark basement playing a trick on my mind.  
"Creation of a frightened imagination" a voice said. It was a hoarse voice, barely a whisper, but somehow it managed to fill the entire room with it's presence.  
Unlike many people, I am not easily scared and was going to say something more to it when the shadow that already was quite transparent, began to dissolve.  
"Wait!" I shouted, and was going to stand up and walk to it when I felt Carson begun waking up in my arms. And when he did so, the shadow disappeared._

 _I had a heck of a time trying to explain myself to Carson when we arrived upstairs afterwards. I took him to my office where he was angry that I had tricked him down to the basement just to scare him. But when I asked if he had seen something behind me, he got a strange look on his face and said there was nothing there. I tried to persuade him by telling that he might have seen one of the special creatures that only he could see, but he stubbornly refused. He claimed there was nothing there, only I who had dressed up to scare him. We discussed this until our temper began to rise, and we were nearly shouting to each other when he finally said, "Would you stop this, there was nothing there. Is not that what you have been trying to tell me since I first came to this place? I did not see anything behind you, and I don't see anything now, that must mean I am cured for my "creative imagination", as you call it, therefore I would like to leave!"  
"You did see something, your so called fantasy creatures are real and I know it because I saw it too." From the fear I saw in his eyes, I knew I was right. "Besides," I informed him, "It is I who decide if a patient is ready to leave or not, and I want to see if you can produce more of your creatures."  
The man turned sickly pale and tried to run, but I had prepare with a couple of strong doctors who were guarding the outside of my office door and they caught him. The doctors managed to get hold of him and I told them to bring the patient to his room and guard his door because he was in a mental state where he might try to escape._

 _From what I have seen today, fantasy creatures, or perhaps it is supernatural beings, are real and I want to find out more about these. Perhaps their presence is triggered by strong emotions and only seen by some few, but if the feelings become stronger or last longer, maybe the creatures will last longer too?  
If they become real enough, I could even perhaps manage to capture one and study it…_

Will took a break from the reading to digest what she just had learned.  
"I don't understand, if the monk had repaired and hidden away the artifacts that bound the creature, why would it appear again, and on the same place where it first had been defeated?"

Her mother looked at her, "Perhaps it's essence somehow is stronger in the basement because one of those sealing objects could still be hidden there and maybe it is broken, or perhaps the creature feeds on peoples fear and all the mentally ill people with all their fears may have drawn it back?"

"That could be a possibility," said Dean, "But why don't you read more and see if this doctor have any explanation for this?"

Will opened the book again and read fast trough the following pages while she quickly summarized the content to her parents. "Henderson came up with several schemes to trick other patients to come down to the basement. Some of them seemed to be able to somewhat summon the creature by exhibit a large amount of fear when scared, but nothing that could hold it for more than a moment. He also write that he was puzzled by why the creature only appeared in the basement as he tried to summon it other places too. Hmm." The red haired Witch turned another page while she mumbled for herself. "Aha" Will exclaimed, "He found the old annals and learned about the monk and the legend!"

"And now we know it too," her stepdad said and stroked his mustache.

"Let's see what more there is to learn."


	16. Chapter 16

**Hello again, this time Will and her parents will learn a little more of what happened at the time when the asylum was open... It doesn't seem like a nice place to me.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

Will continued reading, something out loud and other things she just mumbled. While she did this, Susan walked over to a window and stared out into the dark night. Light from the window where she stood illuminated the ground just below on the outside, and it was hard to see more than a couple of meters further because there were no other lights and it was snowing heavily. The whirling snowflakes were dancing wildly in the wind, making it seem there was other motions at work out there. Susan suddenly started to shiver as she felt herself being watched by unseen eyes and quickly stepped back from the window. She was an adult woman and up until an hour ago, she wouldn't have been afraid of anything she would consider as supernatural. But now, all unaccounted sounds, every unseen corner, the cold air and each dark shadow seemed to be threatening.

"Have you found anything yet?" she said to her daughter.

"Yes, I think I got the picture now," said Will. "Shall I read loud again?"

"Yes please, "her mother said, "I would really like to understand what's going on, I am still very confused about all this"

"Ok, here it goes"

 _27\. December 1971._

 _Yesterday I excavated the basement where the creature appear and I found a piece of wood that must be one of the so-called sacred objects. There was only one there so I guess the monk must have hidden the others around elsewhere just as he said, but I think I have come up with a solution on how to find them. My hypothesis goes that, in lack of a better word, the spirit of the creature, is strongest close to the objects and that peoples' fright somehow make it strong enough to materialize there. For a short moment. If two or more of these objects are close together, it should be possible for it to stay visible for a longer time.  
Therefore, when spring comes, I will take some of my more "sensitive" patients out for a walk in the woods and see if I can scare them there, and if the creature reveal itself, then it know I will be close by. _

_28\. December 1971._

 _One of my patients is often tormented by nightmares and often wake up screaming in the middle of the night, so because of that he gets sleeping pills before he goes to bed. Earlier this evening I replaced his usual pill with an ordinary aspirin pill, he will not notice the difference anyway. Then I took the little wooden object I had found and hide in under his bed. If my theory proves correct and he has a nightmare, his fear will cause the creature to appear in his room and I will know for sure that it is the closeness to the object that is the trigger._

 _29\. December 1971._

 _My theory was correct! I volunteered to take a night shift in order to be close to the patient, and right after midnight, I heard a scream from his room. I rushed to the room and when I opened the door, I could see the semi-transparent creature facing the patient before it disappeared. As for the patient, I brushed it off and told him it was an ordinary nightmare and I would give him a new sleeping pill. Now I know for sure it will work. If I can prove the existence of creatures from beyond this world, no matter how grim it might be, it would be one of the most important discoveries of all time, and my work, my fame, my legacy will live on forever._

"That seem to be the most important he wrote until spring came" said Will, "The following months he mostly write about the usual matters regarding his patients and how to treat them."

"So when does he start writing again?" asked Dean.

The teenager flipped through the pages and read bits and pieces until she found the answer and began reading for her parents again.

 _26\. April 1972._

 _For the last week and a half, I have gone for long walks in the woods around the asylum, looking for likely places to hide the objects. I have marked a few spots that I found interesting and today I took one of the newly arrived patients, Mr. Norris, out for a walk. I chose him for he seem to be one of the nervous types who always look himself over the shoulder to see if there is anyone there. Perfect.  
There is an open space in the woods that is an old overgrown swampy lake. You have to step carefully to avoid getting stuck there, and the surrendering is spooky with dense vegetation and a black pine forest you can't look far into, the ideal place to hide something you don't want to be found._

 _Luckily, I was informed that my new patient enjoyed hiking in the mountains, so I suggested for him that we should take a walk while we talked about his illness. As we spoke, I led him through the forest until we stood at the edge of the swamp thereby I told him I needed to go for some "private business". He excused me and I walked away._

 _Out of sight, I hurried to a place I had rigged a record player with eerie sounds. I started the record player and walked over to another place from where I could see both Mr. Norris and the swamp. To the playing sound of night animals and creaking trees, I found my binocular and started to observe from between branches and leaves. Mr. Norris seemed to be both impatient and nervous as he started to walk back and forth; I saw on his face that he must have let out a curse when suddenly his foot got stuck in a swampy hole. The muddy water squirted around as he tried to pull his foot loose and he began calling for me to help him, but I didn't answer. A howling sound from the record player gave fuel to his rising fear and soon he started to panic. I let my binocular sweep across the swamp and the puddles to see if there was anything there, and just my luck, right above a small puddle, some eerie dark shadow began to take form. It crept across the surface and floated towards Norris who was standing approximately two hundred meters away. Mr. Norris had his eyes on the forest edge so he didn't see the creature that approached him from the opposite direction. When the misty shadow was just fifty meters from him, it started to take form of the nightmare creature with it's skinny arms and skull like head. By this point, Mr. Norris stiffened and became all quiet, slowly he turned around to look behind him. The shriek that escaped him must have caught the attention of every living creature in the forest, and in his fear, he managed to pull loose his foot before he fell on his back and started to crawl on the ground to get away. The creature speeded up and managed to get within perhaps ten meters of him before it started to fade away again. But that didn't slow Mr. Norris' attempt to run away, and I found it wisely to accidently "run into" him before he could get himself lost in the forest._

 _Next Sunday, I will go back to the swamp and look into the puddle to see if I can find one of the objects in it._

Will stopped reading there as the paragraph ended and promptly skipped forward to the date that marked the next Sunday.

"And he did find it" she said, "The question now is, did he find all of the objects, and what did he do with them?"

"I guess you have to read the rest to figure it out," said Dean.

Knowing if she did not, her stepdad certainly would, so Will hurried through more pages and made a comment each time she came across a paragraph that told of a finding. As she red, it became clear that the more of the artifacts the doctor gathered, the more solid the creature became. It was when he had found six of the twelve objects that bad things started to happened.

 _16\. August 1972._

 _I have now found half of the objects and the creature is getting stronger and more "physical". When I put the objects together, it can appear without having a frightened person close by. It also seem to be sentient so I have tried to speak to it. The creature haven't spoken anything at all with the one exception of when I first discovered it in the basement, but it respond to my orders. If I ask it to move itself it does so, and it can do other things as well. Perhaps the creature is tired of being sealed away and want to be released, if I play my cards right I might be able to control it as long as I can bargain with the objects that keeps it trapped. Yesterday I told the creature about this place and what we do here, and if it do as I say and let me study it, I will find more of the sealing objects. When I did that, it stared back at me with it's empty eyes and clicked it's teeth.  
After that, I left the room and hide the objects on different locations such that it wouldn't appear solid if one of the patients have a nightmare, it wouldn't do well if some others learned about it's existence yet._

 _17\. August 1972._

 _When I went to work early this morning, it was to learn that one of the patients had died in his sleep. I have been informed that he had a weak heart so I guess it was of natural causes, he was however the first to die here since I started working here. I have heard some people talk that the nurse who found him had said his face was stretched in what appeared to be a painful grin. The patient's room however was not close to any of the object I have hidden, I am not sure if the creature had anything to do with his death. But just to be cautious, I will hide the objects better when I find more of them._

"Well, what do you think?" said Will and let her hand glide through her fire red hair.

Dean shifted his position on where he sat on the sofa "It's impossible to know for sure, but I would bet my mustache the creature had something to do with it."

"So you think the creature killed him in his sleep?" Susan said to her husband.

"Yes."

"But why would it do so? Don't you think it at least the creature would have kept a low profile until Mr. Henderson had collected all of the artifacts?"

"Oh, maybe the foul creature sensed that the doctor would seek them out no matter what it did." Will shot in. "He must have been too eager to let an obstacle like a dead guy get in his way. People seeking out the supernatural seem all to be like that for some reason."

Dean and Susan looked uncomfortable at each other, thinking of how Will had come to learn that, but decided it would be a question for another time.

"Hey, listen to this" Will said, obviously having found something more.

 _19 August 1972._

 _The first thing that came to my knowledge this morning was that yet another patient had died in his sleep. The nurse that found him described his face making a similar painful grin as he who died a couple of days ago, but no obvious cause of what killed him. I guess I would have to have an autopsy conducted just in case; it may very well be an illness that has to be addressed._

 _21 August 1972._

 _Today I got back the result from the autopsy, the cause of death was in both cases heart failure. Everybody has to die of something, and heart failure is a quite common cause of death, however, I have told the staff that none is to talk about the strange grimaces the dead wore. Any rumor that may disrupt my "special studies" will be highly unwelcome, especially now as I may have located another sealing object. I will go looking for it tomorrow._

 _23 August 1972._

 _The seventh object was easy to find. I brought with me the six others and somehow, the creature made an appearance every now and then to guide me forwards to my goal. It was close by a newly built road for the timber men. However, I felt like being followed during the trip, it is not the eerie feeling I get from being watched by the creature, but something else. What more, from time to time I think I heard footsteps. Perhaps it is the presence of the strange creature that play tricks on my senses, or is it somebody else? The strength or physicalness of the creature increased enough to be visible for me as I walked back. As I went, I spoke to the creature, I said I wanted something back for the objects I gathered and this time it seemed more interested. I said that I would like to ask some questions and that it should nod or shake its head in response. The creature stopped and looked at me with its eyeless face, then it slowly gave me a nod. Good I said, first of all I would like to know more about you._

 _Here follows what I learned from my first "interview" with the creature and it's following answers:  
Firstly, when you appeared in the basement in the basement the first time I saw you, you spoke some words; are you able to speak? It shook its head.  
But I heard you say something, you repeated some of what I had said some moments earlier; are you able to repeat sounds or words that you have heard? Now it gave me a nod.  
Ok, do you have your own language? It shook its head slowly again.  
Satisfied with those answers, I decided to push for more, so I asked;  
Where do you come from, are you from earth? No, it wasn't.  
I followed up. Do you want to get back home from where you came?  
This time the creature didn't seem to answer, and I was about to ask it again before when it gave me a nod. Interesting.  
So you say you come from an another world, is it far away? Again, the creature seemed to linger before it decided to give me some sort of answer; a tilt of its head. I take that as a sign that it mean that it didn't know.  
Are there more of you from where you come? It grinned and gave me a nod. Very interesting.  
Fear! You seem to be drawn towards people who are frightened; what is fear to you? I knew it wasn't a question of yes or no, but it is fascinating and I wanted to see if it gave me a reaction, it did. The creature looked glazed into the dark forest and the sinister smile grew enough to highlight every tendon on its face, and the being itself seemed to grow bigger and darker for a moment.  
This was my cue, so I took the chance and said: Tell me everything about your world and how you came here, and in return I will give you fear. In my profession there is easy to get hands on people who are easily frightened. The creature answered by click its teeth quickly as if it was freezing, but no, it was eager._

Suddenly, Will felt a shiver jolt down her spine, she stopped reading and looked up from the book and around herself. Everybody had been still while they listened to her reading, but now, the groaning sound of slow moving footsteps against old wooden floor could be heard.


	17. Chapter 17

**Hello dear readers, read and review please.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

 _Suddenly, Will felt a shiver jolt down her spine, she stopped reading and looked up from the book and around herself. Everybody had been still while they listened to her reading, but now, the groaning sound of slow moving footsteps against old wooden floor could be heard._

Will tensed and looked franticly around herself for the source of the sound. " _Where is he_ " she thought, " _why can't I see where the sound is coming from!_ "

 _Creak… thump…. creak… thump…._

Nobody dared to breathe while they looked around themselves for the sound that was getting closer and closer. Poor William who was old enough to understand that something was terribly wrong, tried frightened to curl up and hide in Dean's arms. Suddenly, Will felt something light fell on her head and immediately lifted her hand to investigate. She stroke through her hair, pulled back her hand and looked at it, "What's this" she said, "It looks like some sort of powder? Plaster, but how did it get..?" Will didn't finished, in her mind she already knew the answer. She looked up at the dark ceiling above her.

In a room on the floor above them, someone was walking, or rather something.

Will watched her parents as they frightened moved closer to each other. She had thrown off some her fear when the creature had taken her brother and felt more anger towards it than anything else, but her parents was another matter. Before tonight, neither of them would have believed in anything that would have been classified as supernatural or magical. But suddenly all of this had come to an abrupt end in the worst possible way. Now they were trapped in a long abounded asylum stalked by the real boogeyman, and the only one who could keep them safe from it was their daughter whom until recently they had thought they knew. Will felt so bad for her little family and knew she had to protect them at all cost, but she also had a duty as a guardian to banish this thing back from where it came.

The thumping sound continued until it reached the middle of the ceiling above them, almost right above were Will was sitting on the floor, then it stopped.

"Mom, Dean." Will whispered, "I will teleport you outside, then you will get to the car and drive away from here as fast as you can and don't stop before you are home. I will come back later when I have destroyed this thing"

"No!" Said Susan and managed to look both sharply and scared at her, "If we are leaving, we are going together, there is no way I will leave you alone with this monster."

"No, listen here mom…" her protest were cut short when the light suddenly started to flicker, and after a few on and off the lights all died, and the room was dark.

Will rose fast from the floor, "You leave now!" she said loudly in the sternest voice she could muster.

"But Will…" her mother begged, but Will rushed over to them in the dark and hugged Susan, Dean and her little brother.

"Sorry" she whispered, and while holding them, she concentrated her thoughts on the car outside the building where she wanted to send them.

A bright flash briefly illuminated the room and then they were gone.

Still being in her guardian form, it didn't take long before her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The natural light from the few windows, no matter how little, provided just enough to let her see the ghostly outlines of the furniture around her. But this little moment was all her fantasy needed to start betraying her by showing ghostly pictures of dark things she didn't want to see.

" _Get a grip of yourself_ " Will shouted in her mind, " _Gather your courage, it is up to you now_." And then she marched toward the door leading out of the room. Time to find the creature, and she should really consider to send a telepathic message to the other girls asking for some help. However, she had just opened the door before she heard a desperate voice echoing down the corridor.

"Will! Where are you?"

It was her mother. She turned towards the entrance hall where the sound came from.

"We are still inside, and the door still won't open!" her mother continued.

"What" shouted Will, "Stay where you are, I am coming."

Will shot like a bullet through the door and ran down the corridor. She didn't know that as fast as she had left the room, an unknown figure walked silently in and stopped in front of the book she had left on the floor. The book was picked up and together with the unseen being; it disappeared out from the room.

The entrance hall was lit by some of the old lamps she magically had turned on not long ago. Will saw her parents standing close by the main doors, which Dean in vain tried to push open.

"I thought we were going to appear on the outside." Susan said and ran over to Will.

"Yes you where, but why didn't it work? Maybe I didn't focus hard enough? Let me try again."

Before her mother could respond, Will tried to teleport her once more. In a flash, the woman disappeared… and reappeared right beside her husband.

"It didn't work." Will said surprised."

Dean stopped pressing on the door and looked first at his wife, than to his stepdaughter and swallowed, "So, does that mean we are trapped inside?"

"It seem so," said Will quietly.

"Maybe we have to get rid of the creature before we can get out again?" Dean suggested.

"Ok then," Will said, "Come with me. We will have to go back to the room because I managed to leave the book, again. It might give us some more clues. Then we will try to figure out what to do"

The light had disappeared from the corridor, and none of Will's commands could get the lamps on the wall working again. Dean had turned on his old Maglight while Will made an electric blue orb to give more light to their surroundings. Susan had taken hold on her son, she didn't let him walk but carried him in case they needed to run. Against the windows on their left side, a thousand snowflakes came dancing out of the night and disappeared again. No one spoke, they only listened to the voice of the old haunted asylum as the wind mad it groan through hidden cracks and holes.

The trip back to the room was short, but it still felt like an eternity. Will walked in first, keeping her hand with the blue light outstretched in front of her to give a clear sight. There couldn't been more than two or three minutes since they left the room, but from the look of it they might never have been there in the first place.

"Where did you leave the book?" Dean asked while he swept his flashlight across random places in the room.

"I left it on the floor right where I was standing when I tried to teleport you out."

"But I don't see the book on the floor." Said Dean and studied it carefully, "In fact, I can't see to find the book anywhere in this room. It shouldn't be that hard to spot"

"That's because it's gone." Will said shaky, "The creature must have taken it."

"It was right above us, it must have heard what you were reading and didn't like it."

Susan who were standing behind Dean and Will looked nervous behind and around herself to see if there was anything there and said, "So when you came running for us, the creature came in here and took the old diary. Do you think it's still here?"

"No, I don't see it, the thing seem to be able to disappear into thin air at will, which might cause a problem for us if it doesn't want to stay and fight." Will replied.

"Will" Dean said thoughtfully, "What have we learned about this creature, perhaps is there something you or we know that might help us to defeat it, or get us out of here?"

"Well, let's see" said Will and thought for a moment, "It was originally summoned by an ancient tribe from this area to take revenge upon another tribe, but it went out of control and killed its summoner and the first tribe. Then it was sealed in twelve artifacts that were buried in a hill on which later this monastery was built. Some of the artifacts were broken and the creature appeared again and started killing those who lived here, before it was sealed away again by a monk who hide the artifacts such that they never should be found again."

"But they was" Dean continued when Will made a break, "Some part of it responded by the fear that was emitted from the patients here and doctor Henderson learned about it and wanted to find the twelve objects in order to learn more about the creature. And the killings started all over again."

"But we didn't learn how many of the artifacts he managed to find or what happened to them," Susan said as she joined the conversation. "And what about your aunt, where does she fit in all this, how did she get hand on the asylum and why were we asked to come here?"

"I am afraid we need the book in order to learn some of the answers," said Will. "But the impression I get from all the writings, is that the creature needs the artifacts to be close to each other to become physical, perhaps one or several of them to be broken in order to kill, and most likely all of them to be destroyed to finally become free."

"And what will happened then" said Susan.

"I am not sure, but it is most likely that the people in the village will be the first to experience its freedom…"

As the last words were spoken, an eerie silence spread inside the cold room. Then Dean said, "I say, as the village is still standing, and the creature for the moment seem to be restricted to the asylum but still quite physical , we can presume that many, if not all of the objects are gathered on the same place, but not yet broken. And if the creature is physical strong enough to attack us (now he looked at his wife), it must also be strong enough to break them if it want so. That lead us to two possibilities;  
One, the creature have the objects gathered, but for some reason cannot break them itself.  
Two, the creature can break the objects, but does not have all of them."

Will thought about this for a second, then she broke into a proud smile, "Great thinking Dean, that sounds like a reasonable theory."

"But what should we do with it, the artifacts I mean," Susan said, "If they are broken, can you fix them and seal the creature back? And where are they, this building is huge, they could be hidden anywhere."

"The office?" Dean suggested.

"Nope", Will said "Too obvious, I have been there and the only suspicious object in that room is the painting of the doctor himself. Besides, the monk wrote that the sacred objects where simple things like pieces of pottery, wood, bone etc. and would stand out in an asylum for lunatics. For people here, those artifacts would either look like antiquities or simply junk, and Henderson would likely have to retrieve and carry them around while he did his "research". How and where could he have done that without being interrupted?"

As soon as she said that, Will, Susan and Dean stared at each other while the revelation hit them all and they exclaimed simultaneously.

"The basement!"

* * *

 **Things are moving in the shadows and even with Will's magic, getting out of the asylum doesn't seem to be an easy task. What will they find down in the creepy basement this time?**


	18. Chapter 18

**More horrors awaits as the night drags on. Please read and leave a comment of what you think this time too.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

They passed the kitchen on their way to the basement, Will walked first while her parents followed close behind.

"But how on earth are we going to find what we are looking for," her mother said. "We were there earlier and had a look, the basement is filled up with all sort of clutter and junk from the last two hundred years it will take an eternity looking through all of it. And what will you do when we find them?"

"Honestly, I do not know. All I know is that if they are broken we need to repair them and find a way to remove the artifacts from each other so the creature not can materialize again." Will said, never taking her eyes from the empty corridor in front of her.

"But how are you going to do that if it's impossible to leave the building, how can we get them far away enough from each other?" Her mother replied again.

"There may not be possible to teleport out of here, but there is always one place that is open for me, and I know _they_ will know what to do!"

"Who is they?" Susan said, sounding either scared or confused.

Will instantly regretted her choice of words, "I will tell you later, I promise. We need to find the objects first."

They passed the bedrooms where they had slept earlier. Will casted a glance to her side. The doors were open as none had time to close them when they left, and the rooms inside lay bathed in dark. The bedroom door to her parents lay broken against the wall where she had thrown it, in the corner of her eye, Will saw her mother shiver, probably thinking of what had happened here not long ago.

The little light that still shone, started to flicker.

"Please, not again." Will heard her mother whisper.

"We better hurry," she said to her parents, "There is no knowing what will happened next, but if it comes again I promise I will protect you."

The lights were struggling to keep on shining, and for each time they went off again, the longer it took before they turned on. They turned the corner and spotted the door at the far end of the corridor. Once more it would lead them down to the nightmarish cellar on this awful night. She heard her mother started to breathe rapidly and was probably on the brink of panicking, luckily, she calmed a little when Dean laid an arm around her. But Will suspected he was just as afraid himself but didn't show it for his wife's sake.

It didn't take long before they reached the door. Inside, the stairway were just as dark as ever and Will let the electrical light in her hand grow to shed more light on the surroundings. Seeing there was nothing there, they carried on and soon they were standing on the bottom and looked through the door leading in to the first room in the basement.

The lights were gone, and Will couldn't get them on again, even with her magic, so she decided to do something else. She let her electrical light levitate out of her hand and made it fly upwards to the ceiling where it could light up a larger area. Once she had directed it to a suitable spot she let it stay, she then called forth more of them from her hands and each and one of them she sent in a different direction. Soon the room was bathed in an electrical blue light that allowed them to see the entire basement.

Dean walked over to the closest stack of boxes and started looking through them "I think it is best we start looking, there is so much stuff in here and who knows when the creature decide to appear."

"Ok, but you leave lockers and larger chests to me just in case _somebody_ is lurking inside." Will said and went to open the lock of a chest that was standing close by.

Soon everybody was looking frantically after the artifacts, emptying chests and boxes, turning over piles of closes and medical equipment, but while doing so they unconsciously walked further and further away from each other.

How long she had been in the basement, Will didn't know. All sense of time had seemed to disappear after she came down here and the huge underground chamber felt endless with it's innumerable objects. Will opened yet another trunk, inside it revealed old radiographs. Out of curiosity she took up a couple of them and held them up against the light to study them. One was a picture of a lung with ribs in the background, the lung was dotted with white spots and on the black edge it was written with a white pen; Tuberculosis. Will shivered and looked at another picture, this was showing a row of teeth, nothing seemed strange about this one. The third picture showed a human skull in profile, against the black background, the bone was pearly white and in the middle she could make out the grey substance that obviously was the brain. But on this one there were several markers with attached lines pointing to writings on the edge; Anomaly, enlarged area! Request lobotomy. Will shuddered and was going to lay down the pictures, but something held her back. Something seemed to be wrong, but what? She decided to take a closer look at the pictures. She inspected them closely, but nothing seemed to be wrong with them except from what the notes told. Will then took a glance at her immediate surrounding, something was still wrong. Then it hit her, it wasn't the pictures, it was the light. The light was getting dimmer!

She had been so occupied by looking for the artifacts that she hadn't noticed the room was getting darker, but now that she was aware of it she could see her magical light orbs were smaller than when she had created them. But that shouldn't be happening, they should have stayed at the same size until she removed them. " _Please, not now!_ " she thought fearfully as she knew what the dark would bring.

Will tried to concentrate her thoughts on the lights to make them bigger again, but no matter how hard she tried, it didn't work. She looked around and found herself alone "Mom, Dean," she said loud, calling worryingly for her parents attention. "Have you found anything yet? Something is happening. The light is going out, come over to me."

A muffled response came from two different directions, they had all walked apart at some point she realized, and now they couldn't see each other because of all of the stuff separating them.

"I am here" Dean's voice said. "Where?" She heard her mother reply from an another direction.

Will started to go to where her mother's voice had come from, "Stay where you are, I will find you" she called out. She suddenly became nervous and walked faster, but the seemingly random placement of every spare bed, medical apparatus, lockers and piles of junk made the place like a maze. She jumped over suitcases, crawled under fallen coat stands and crept between containers while the light was getting weaker and the shadows bigger and darker.

To her relief she finally found Susan. She had stopped looking and was holding William up in her arms. "Will, there you are" she said, "What is happening, why is it getting darker?"

"I don't know," Will said, "But I think we should stay closer together."

Susan looked down at the floor, "Perhaps it is best we go upstairs again."

"No, it won't be any better upstairs, we cannot get out and I guess it is still night, so it will be just as dark there. We should find Dean and look together."

As on cue, Dean called, "I will turn on my flashlight, it is getting too dark. Speak loud so I can hear where you are."

"Okay" Will shouted, "I am here with mom and William."

* * *

From another spot in the basement, Dean turned on his flashlight. The warm yellow glow was a sharp contrast to the magical blue lights Will had created, they were now so small that only weak blue flares enlightened the room and could not prevent the ever growing shadows expanding their grip. Dean walked nervously towards the point where he heard Will and Susan speak to him. He let his flashlight sweep across every object in front of him, dark frightening unidentifiable objects became chairs, cupboards, bicycles and other things he knew. But suddenly, in the corner of his eye Dean thought he saw movements in the dark, he flew around and pointed his flashlight towards it and let out a piercing scream.

"Aaargh!" Dean stumbled backwards and fell.

"Dean, what is it?" he heard both Susan and Will shout.

"It is… I see…" Dean stuttered as he laid on the floor and pointed his flashlight towards what he had seen and got a better look.

"Mannequins!" he said astounded.

"What?" he heard the others shout.

"Sorry, I thought I saw something that moved, but I guess it was only my imagination. There are some mannequins here," he said. "Exhibition dolls that look like humans, they startled me."

Dean got himself back on his feet and brushed his clothes before he took a closer look at the life-sized dolls. The dolls were standing in a group some meters away behind some other stuff that obscured some of his view. Behind them again was the dying light from one of Will's blue orbs that flickered. That was probably the source of the movement he had seen.

He gathered himself, turned around and was just about to walk further when a thought of uncertainty made him stop. He looked slowly over his shoulder to cast a last glance at the dolls. Then to his eternal fright, one of them turned around and looked back at him.

Dean's mind went blank as he let out a scream that must have been the most terrified scream in history, but in reality, not a sound escaped his lips. Gasping for air, he took a step backwards but didn't see the rusty old tube on the floor that had been waiting for him for more than fifty years.

Old and rusty as it was, it was still round and before he knew it, Dean slipped on it and came tumbling backwards and crashed in a mountain of boxes, books and clothes that came falling down, burying him and his flashlight.

"DEAN!" He heard Susan and Will shout again, but he didn't respond as he desperately tried to free himself from everything that had fallen upon him. Dean now in a state of pure panic, pushed some heavy boxes off his stomach and tried to stand up, only to discover he had become trapped under a pole he for some reason was unable to move. While he was pushing away some objects, he felt something in the pile behind him started to move. He looked up to see a huge old wardrobe with dark painting and double doors began tilting towards him, it was without doubt heavy.

Dean looked down at the pole that lay over his stomach and realized he had to get under it and pull himself past to get away. The wardrobe tilted more and more until it went over to a sliding motion downwards while the teacher started to pull himself out. Finally, the gravity and the sharp angle made the doors open towards him, revealing the horrible sight of the grinning, eyeless face of creature that had waited for him inside.

"WILL. HEEELP!" Dean screamed with all the force his lungs could muster.

* * *

Will responded immediately. She shot a lightning bolt straight into the piles in the direction of Dean's scream of terror. Bits and pieces of every object flew in all direction as she brutally made a path through it, and then she grabbed her mother's hand and ran.

"Dean" Will shouted, "Are you there?"

She had sprinted only thirty meters when she saw him trying to crawl out from a pile right to the left of her. As he practically was crawling on his back to get loose, he had escaped from being hit by flying debris and just as the last of her magical light gave a final flicker, she saw the demonic creature getting ready to leap on him from inside of the wardrobe.

"Hey you bastard. What do you think you are doing!" Will shouted and shoot a lightning bolt straight at the creature.

The wardrobe exploded and everything went dark again.

"Dean, are you alright?" she heard her mother cry worriedly behind her.

"Yes," Dean answered from the dark, "I have gotten loose, just hang on a second." The sound of metal buckets hitting the floor was soon followed by a "Yes!" and suddenly Dean had found his flashlight again, pointing it towards his wife and bewinged daughter.

Will didn't know how it still could be shining since no other lights would, but she didn't question it, grateful enough what little light it provided. Her mother reminder her that she had more to worry about.

"What happened to the creature?" she said, "did you kill it?"

"I hardly doubt so, I zapped it before and it didn't seem to take much harm from that…" Will stopped abruptly as she sensed something sinister approach.

"Watch out!" she yelled, and prepared for the assault. But it wasn't directed at her. Before she had time to react, a black mass of thin limbs and torn clothes attacked Dean from behind and nailed him to the floor while the flashlight flew out of his hand.

Will didn't hesitate, she sprang forward to save her dad from its deadly grip. She found the creature and tried to pull it away from him, and although she couldn't see well, she felt how the creature hold Dean in a firm grip, refusing to let go of its prey.

Will took hold on the creatures' bony arms and tried to pull them loose from their grip on Dean. As she did so, Dean let out a bloody scream.

"Let go of him you blasted beast!" Will shouted and pulled harder, "Don't you dare hurt him."

"The claws are digging into my arms," screamed Dean, and just as he did so, her mother had somehow managed to find the flashlight and pointed it in their direction, making Will able to see how the creature stuck onto her dad. In their struggle, she could see red spots began forming where the pointy fingers pierced the jacket on the upper arms and understood she had to react quickly. Being able to see where to take hold on it, she managed to get a firmer grip on the creature and pulled it off her dad. As soon as she wrestled it loose from him, she sent a high-voltage bolt through the wretched devil that sent it flying meters away, followed by a sickening _crack_ as it received a brutal meeting with the stone floor. Her mother stepped over to her and let the flashlight shine on her injured husband, but Will couldn't afford to let the creature get away again.

"Mom," she said quickly, "Point the light to the creature so it can't sneak away."

"But Dean," she began and stared at her husband who were clutching his upper arms that were bleeding.

"You have too, if we lose sight on it, the creature will sneak up on us again and attack."

"Susan, please do as she says," said Dean between his teeth," I will manage, the wounds aren't that bad, it is only flesh wounds and it doesn't feel like anything's broken."

"Ok, if you say so," Susan said and pointed the flashlight with a shaky hand towards the vile thing that lay on the floor not far away.

Will saw an iron tube that stuck out from a pile and pulled it out, determined to knock it so hard in the creatures' skull that it wouldn't rise anymore. She jerked it out and ran towards it with the tube lifted above her head, ready to strike when suddenly something got tangled up between her legs and made her fall. The tube went flying out of her hands as she set out her arms to break the fall. Her weapon landed with a smack on the floor midway between her and the creature. Will looked back to see what she had stumbled on.

It was a foot!

She quickly let her gaze followed the foot and leg upwards and saw the figure of a human body in the dark, standing there right beside her. The teenager looked fast between the creature that by now seemed to be moving on the floor and the newcomer above her.

"Sorry little fairy, I can't allow you kill the creature," he said.

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 **You might have noticed I tend to end my chapters in this way, I hope it makes you want to see what happend next. Does it work?**


	19. Chapter 19

**Alright, chapter nineteen is now finished and ready for you to read. I hope you enjoy reading a new chapter every week because it have taken me a lot of preparation in order to do so. Have a good reading.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

* * *

"Sorry little fairy, I can't allow you kill the creature," he said.

Will looked astonished at the mysterious man and knew her parents did the same. "Who are you?" Will said and sprang up to face whoever this was. Her mom was also so surprised that she pointed the flashlight away from the creature and over to the mysterious man. And when she did so, Will immediate recognized the old man they briefly had met outside the inn not long ago.

"It's you! The old man from the village, but how did you…" Will began recognizing him, "Why are you helping that monster?"

"Oh you see, I have an agreement with that _monster_ ," he said and looked into the dark where the creature had begun pulling itself up. "I help the creature by giving it something it needs and in return it will give me something I want from it."

"And what would that be?" Will spat, "What in the world do you have that it could want from you?"

"You see, everybody have something that other want for themselves. Want or need... What it truly wish for is something small and seemingly insignificant, something that for most people are nothing more than rubbish and discarded objects."

Suddenly Will understood who this man truly was, "Henderson!" she practically yelled. "You are Doctor Henderson. The crazy man who went looking for the creature, you found the artifacts and brought them together to revive it."

The already dense atmosphere in the basement became almost suffocating while the named person twisted his face and made an angry grimace before he started so speak slowly. "Crazy you call me, cruel say others, unfeeling and ruthless," he said, almost tasting the words "That is what people call me. People who are jealous, people who fear, don't understand or have any ambitions of doing something brilliant on their own. I have pursued the unknown through all my life. The thrills of discovering the hidden courses that drive the human mind and make us what we are, and making me famous for my work. Then one day, I unexpectedly I found this strange creature, unknown for the science and possibly coming from an unknown world. I know about its gruesome past, but the creature promised me that if I could gather all the artifacts that binds it to this world, it would give me proof of existing worlds beyond our own. Forget about the discovery of the new world, the source of the Nile or the moon landing, soon everyone will know my name and what I have done."

"You are mad," shouted Will, "People will only see you as a ruthless murderer who sacrificed people for your own ambitions. Who will like to learn that creatures of their nightmares actually exist and how are you going to accomplish this? Do you seriously believe the creature will help you when you have set it free?"

"There are unfortunately a few things you don't understand my fair creature," Doctor Henderson said, emphasizing the last words so heavily that Will could see he was referring to her own enchanted guardian form. "I do not seek fame simply to only be admired, I do it because I want to. And if the creature ever want to leave this dungeon, it better stick with me because it is _I_ who have most of the artifacts. True enough, I do not completely trust it, so the creature will have to help me before I do anything that set it free. And speaking of creatures, it also makes me wonder what you are, you looked convincingly like a human first time we met, but now I can clearly see you are something more…"

"You stay away from my daughter!" Susan suddenly screamed and took up a defensive stance beside Will and looked between the new threat and her daughter.

"Mom" said Will pleadingly, slightly caught off guard by her outburst, "Please, you have to keep an eye on the creature, it may disappear again. I will take care of this." But as she said that, she caught glimpse of a sudden movement in the corner of her eye and understood it was too late. The creature had gotten away to hide in the darkness around them. Will made a move to get ready to follow after it when she was stopped by Henderson's hoarse voice.

"Oh no, you don't," the old doctor said and pulled forth a gun from a pocket, pointing it towards Will. Both Susan and Dean became startled by this unexpected turn of events, but Will held her composure. "I have seen the fairy lights you made a little while ago, I do not now how you did it but I am sure I know why they disappeared. You see, the creature is a being of the night and it has its own magic that can suffocate all lights. It lives in all dark places and can hide in every shadow no matter how small. As long there is a dark place it will thrive and grow strong and in this room with all it's content there will always be a shadow for it to hide, because no light can extinguish all shadows. At least not here, but I will not take any chances with you. I do not know the source of you powers or what you are able to do with them but I warn you, I will fire if you make any hasty movement."

"What do you plan to do?" Will said, not intimidated the slightest.

"I want the last object from you."

"But we don't have any of those, that was why we came down here in the first place, to look for them." Dean said from behind his wife, having gotten himself up from the floor. He was still bleeding and clutched his upper arms.

"I strongly suspect you do. Throughout the years, I have managed to get hold of eleven of the sealing objects that bind the creature, but no matter how much I have searched, I have never been able to find the last one. That noisy woman must have found it and hidden it away, preventing me from obtaining my greatest goal."

"My aunt" Dean said.

"Betty" he snarled and looked with contempt at Dean, "Your aunt suspected I was hiding something, she was too observant for her own good. She was always looking after the patients and when some of them died, she began asking questions and secretly tried to follow me around. I told her if she wanted to keep her job, she had to stop poke her nose in things she had no business in. For a while I thought she had stopped but she didn't, she must already had learned enough to put two and two together and sought answers on her own when I wasn't around to monitor her. I don't know how she did it, but she managed to find the last artifact before I did and hide it from me. Without that I couldn't keep my part of the bargain and release the creature, but I knew she couldn't destroyed it because that would set it free. So I took my time and waited. As several patients had already disappeared and nobody been found no matter how hard people were looking, I knew they wouldn't look too closely into it if I disappeared too, so I faked my own death can you say. I thought that if I also suddenly vanished, she would think it was the creature's doing and let down her guard. I even made sure she could get hold on the institute when it closed, as I knew she would try to prevent people from getting in and accidently awaken the creature. But I could never find it, even after she died I searched everywhere without finding anything. What I found instead was a letter that would be sent after she was gone. I read it and learned she had a relative living far away that would inherit her; she said she would send an object that surely would interest him as he was interested in history."

"So I would take care of it without knowing what it truly was," concluded Dean and unconsciously let his right hand slide down to his jacket pocket and clutch around its content.

"So I took the letter and rewrote it, telling you to come over here and take with you your " _lucky charm_ " and look at the institute, quite opposite of what she had written in her original letter."

"Why do you think I would ever…" Dean began but never finished when a black shadow suddenly flew out of the dark and attacked him, hitting him down to the floor again before he felt himself being dragged violently away. Will and Susan spun around to see what happened behind them, but a "Stop!" followed by a click from the gun, made them hold back.

"I have seen the creature becoming even more solid since you came her, and I suspect it can sense the presence of the last object."

"You monster," screamed Susan, sounding both furious and scared at the same time, "Just take the artifact but let my husband go!"

"I would have done so," he said and smiled sinisterly, "That's why I brought the gun, but it seems the creature so badly want to take it. No harm for me to let the creature get it, for some reason the creature cannot destroy the objects, it need some others to do that and I already possess the rest of the artifacts, therefore I am in full control. Nobody here are going to do anything without I say so."

"Aargh, HELP!"

They heard Dean scream in pain and Will raced fast through her options in her head. If she didn't rescue her stepfather, he would be done for sure, and if she tried to do so, Henderson might try to shoot her or her mother in the process. But he had threatened if she did any suspicious movements… Will grinned darkly to herself; the old man truly did have no idea of the full extent of her powers. If he expected some sort of magic formula and hand gestures from her side, he was sorely wrong. She closed her eyes for a brief second, and before anyone had any idea of what was going on, Will had created a pinkish glimmering force field between Henderson and themselves, shielding them from any attack. Her magical shield surprised both Susan and Henderson who jumped when the barrier suddenly appeared and Will took this moment of confusion to grab her mothers' arm and shouted;

"Run!"

With a strong grip, Will dragged Susan with her in the direction the creature had disappeared with Dean.

"Stop," yelled Henderson as he lowered his gun and fired. A load pang echoed through the basement, but the bullet ricocheted off the force field and back to the surprised man, who barely avoiding being hit by it.

It was almost pitch dark. The only thing that prevented them from blindly running into everything was the little light provided by the flashlight her mother still was clutching and the dim pink light from her barrier illuminating the background. Will and Susan ran through the labyrinth-like basement and tried to locate Dean, the creature was obviously trying to take him away from them. They could hear the noise from all the crates that fell down while the creature dragged Dean along. That and the constant screaming and shouting from Dean who was dragged over them in the process, further and further into the dark. Will didn't know whether or not the old doctor was following after them, the only thought in her mind was to find Dean before something more gruesome happened to him.

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 **I hope you like my story so far because it isn't long before it is finished now I think. However, _I_ am not finished yet... I have made a little mini-series of one shots I will put out after this one have ended so you better stay tuned. But more on that later and until next time, read and leave a comment. I'd really like to hear what you think : )**


	20. Chapter 20

**Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

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A load crash followed by some nasty swearing close by caught her attention and her mom directed the light towards the noise, allowing Will to see a swift movement behind a pile of junk. Without hesitation, she flung a beam of white and pinkish light towards it that upon impact made everything fly in all directions. And behind it, she could see the creature and Dean. The first one had lost its iron grip when something from the pile struck and knocked it down to the ground. Dean was also on the floor, covering his head, but when the light from his wife found him, he immediately started to push himself up.

Dean however, didn't get far before he suddenly felt a grip around his neck and the point of a gun pressing into the side of his skull.

"Not so fast my friend," a hoarse voice said behind him and the light from the flashlight revealed the haunting face of Dr. Henderson, "You know what I want. No more tricks from you my fairy, or this man get a bullet through his brain."

Dean moaned in pain and closed his eyes but didn't try to move. "Go on. Take it. It is inside my pocket," he gritted through his teeth.

The whitehaired man let go of his grip, but still keeping the gun close to Deans' head while he let his free hand slide down the teachers' jacked and into one of his pockets. Henderson's' face broke into a grin as he took hold on his prize and pulled it out to look at it. "At last, I have the final thing I need to fulfill my part of the deal," Henderson proclaimed satisfied to himself as he stared at the arrowhead, "Now I will finally see and learn about other worlds that I have desired for so long." Then he put it in his own pocked and spoke to Will and Susan, "I want you two to stand back and no more hocus pocus from you. I will keep your father here close to me and if you do anything again…, I guess you know the rest… Now move backwards!"

Will and Susan walked back a few steps until Henderson thought it was far enough. Still, the only light that made any of them able to see came from the flashlight Susan was holding and the doctor clearly wanted to have some light so he could see. When they stopped the basement fell silent, only the nervous breathing from Dean could be heard. Then the doctor decided to speak;

"Hey creature," he spoke into the dark, "Come forth and do as I say."

It was still for a moment when nothing happened, then Will saw a fog-like shadow, soundless approaching the outskirts of the light rim. The grim figure did not want to step fully into the light.

"If I have understood you correctly," he began, "You need half of the sealing objects to be broken in order to create a portal back to your own world, but all of them must be broken to make you whole and thereby able to go through it yourself."

At the border between the dim light and the overwhelming darkness of the basement the creature slowly came forth, while its eternal and hideous grin stretched even wider.

"I have brought with me five of the objects tonight, the others I have hidden on a secret place that I will not reveal for you yet. I will break them if you open a portal and let me pass through it and see what's on the other side. If I get what I want, I will release more of you in the future. Do we have our deal?"

The creature nodded again and black fog followed the heads' movement.

"However," he said and stared down at Dean, ", I cannot destroy the objects as I am currently busy keeping this guy in close company. Therefore I want you to break them," and looked directly at Will.

"I would never," Will began.

"Oh, for your fathers' sake, I bet you would," Henderson said, and to demonstrate he pressed the gun muzzle at Deans' head.

Before Will could respond, Henderson stuck his free hand in a pocket on his jacket, took up a small bag, and threw it over to Will together with the arrowhead he had in his hand.

"Now, open it," he said.

Will caught them and opened the little leather bag and took a look at the content. There was a handful of tiny objects; two other arrowheads of iron, a piece of ceramic formed like a bear and two small animal bones. Together with the third arrowhead, this made up half of the original twelve artifacts. She examined each of them closely, then she looked up and took a glance at Dean. His clothes were torn in many places and his wounds were still bleeding and would need to be treated as soon as possible. From his head came a red strip of fresh blood and she hoped it wasn't from anything serious. The rest of his body probably also hurt after being dragged through half of the basement. To make thing worse, Henderson seemed not to be one of those who only came up with empty threats. He had already sacrificed several people to the gruesome creature so he would likely not go easy on Dean if she refused to do as he said. Will closed her eyes and clutched her hand around the objects letting her instinct take over as she guided a stream of magic from her hand into the artifacts. A bright light appeared, quickly followed by a sharp crack and Will opened her eyes again. She reached out her hand and opened it to reveal its broken content.

"Yes finally" Henderson cried and stared eagerly at the creature, "Now it is your turn."

But the creature didn't respond, it stood frozen and unmovable like a gothic statue from a long abounded graveyard. The doctor seemed to be taken back when he didn't get the anticipated reaction from it. Will on the other side, being sensible to magic, felt something sinister start to happening. The feeling however, was not the familiar she got when somebody opened a portal or made something out of ordinary magic, but rather something of dark power.

Then to her horror, the flashlight started to flicker. On and off….

" _What's going on_ ," Will thought and looked from the creature to the old man and then around herself before her eyes fell back at the creature. Something was wrong, the feeling of terror she had suppressed earlier came back with full force when her mind started giving her images of what would come lurking in the dark when the last light was gone. As if somebody suddenly had turned on a horror movie, she started to imagine of how the creature would silently sneak up at them in the dark, one at a time. Letting its cold claws close around their neck and slice it open, or maybe it would mutilate but not entirely kill them, leaving them broken and helpless without hope here inside the desolated asylum where no one would ever find them.

" _The darkness feels so suffocating, I can hardly breathe. What shall I do?"_

She watched the creature come closer and closer to Henderson and his hostage each time the light flickered. _"No stop! Must focus._ " Will thought sternly to herself, " _think!_ "

Around her, the people reacted their own way to the unexpected turn of events. Susan who was standing beside her had frozen in fear and her breathing became irregular when each breath sounded like choking. Her little brother had hidden behind Susan and was equally afraid and got tears in his eyes but dared not to make the slightest noise. Henderson, who also understood that something was wrong shouted in vain at the creature, demanding to get an answer from the mute being for why it didn't do as he said. Dean who had the gun pointed at him made tiny but still noticeable movements with his body each time the light went out, trying to get in a flight position.

" _What should I do, the creature comes closer every time the light go off._ " Will thought as she watched the events unfold in front of her. " _Every time the light goes off, wait a minute, maybe if I could…_ "

"Woman," Henderson suddenly turned his attention to Susan, "Get your light working, and you," he addressed the grinning monster that came ever closer, "Stop doing whatever you plan and do as I say or else you will be trapped here for all eternity."

The grinning creature just looked back at the old man as if it was mocking him. Then completely unexpected, the creature let a hand slip into a rift on the ragged clothing on its body and pulled out a rotten bag that was made of the same kind of material as its clothes. And with great flexibility the claw-like fingers peeled off the string that kept it closed, revealing its hidden treasure.

Henderson's eyes bulged at what he saw, "Impossible" he said hoarsely, this time with fear creeping into his voice.

In a bag of dark grey, resting on the creatures hand was the six remaining artifacts.

Broken.

The eerie sound of clicking teeth sounded like thunder in their ears, then the light flickered a final time and everything went black…

" _Nononono not again,_ " Will thought and tried desperately to summon light from her hands again. But to no avail, only a few sparks appeared but died almost as quickly as she made them.

"Will," she heard her mother whisper with a voice so scared that Will though she had begun to cry, and Will knew she probably wasn't faring much better herself.

" _Light, I need light, any sort of light. But how can I protect mom and Dean, when can't I summon anything."_

Will was becoming desperate. Every second felt like an eternity when she didn't know what was happening around her or what to do to save her loved ones when her powers finally, like an answer from above the solution came to her, " _Of course,_ " she thought." _I have one light that will always shine, no matter how dark it is_." The teenage girl stretched out her hand to the darkness and spoke out loud, "Heart of Kandrakar, please give us your light."

The Heart materialized in her hand and its heavenly bright and multicolored light filled the basement and Will felt a wave of a familiar and lovingly power rush through her, washing away every doubt and fear she ever had. She could see again and every object around became visible, books, chairs, bags and who knew what. Light made by pure and ancient magic made sure no room was dark. The shadows that naturally would have formed elsewhere disappeared when light filled every locked chest, every box and smallest inch in the old basement. Susan, Dean and Henderson stared at the Heart with its unparalleled beauty that none of them had seen before and Will felt truly strong. However, the creature who in the dark had gotten dangerously close to the two men, shrank in stature and turned around to hide its face from the illustrious light.

In just a moment, less than a second, everything had turned around. Will with her wings now unfold to their greatest extent, spoke in all her ethereal glory to the people in the fullest authority she held as a guardian of all universes.

"Now it is time to put an end to all this horror. This creature do not belong to this world, it was summoned long ago by people with ill wills, and its staying here has caused nothing but pain, misery and death to those who have been unfortunately enough to meet it. And you!" She turned sternly to the doctor. "By collecting the artifacts that holds the creature in order to use its power for your own, and discarding every human life in the process, are also guilty. Both of you will come with me to Kandrakar where you must answer for your actions."

The old man was speechless as he saw the fairy woman floating weightless half a meter over the floor without beating her wings, and in her outstretched hand holding the illustrious Heart that radiated enormous power. Not only had he miscalculated the creature's actions but he had also gravely underestimated Will's might. This was going to cost him dearly.

The vile creature however, had other plans. It opened its mouth and let out an ear-deafening scream that struck deep into the bones of those who heard it. But it wasn't an attack. Not far away from the creature, Will sensed the air started to shift and shadows of magic began making a hole in the air that took shape of a portal. The purpose of it was immediate clear for Will, and it was not to give Henderson a guided tour in the creatures' home world.

Will acted quickly and before it could escape, she let the Heart levitate in the air, flew over and attacked the corpse looking creature, throwing it so hard against the wall that any lesser being would have broken to pieces against it. But knowing it could take vastly more than the fragile body should indicate, she also sent a bolt of lightning and magic to strike it, and this time with far more power than she had used until now. The sheer light of her blast illuminated the entire basement and blinded everyone except herself.

As the light slowly dimmed, she saw the creature lying completely still against the wall with several of its limbs pointing in unnatural directions and the portal it made began to shrink.

"NO!" Screamed Henderson as he watched it fade, "I refuse to let it slip away from me now after all these years. Not so close!" He forgot all about Dean and the others and ran towards it.

"Stop," Will shouted, but the old man ignored her command and before she could do anything to stop him, he made a jump that was quite impressive for someone at his age and dived into the shrinking portal.

"You don't know what lies on the other side," Will continued, but it was too late. The portal closed behind him in the next moment, leaving Will and her parents alone with the creature.


	21. Chapter 21

**Hello dear readers, this is the last chapter and will be a bit longer than normal. I hope you have enjoyed my story and as usual, I would really like to hear what you think.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.**

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The portal was gone, leaving no trace behind. Will was sure the heart could open a new portal to let her follow Henderson into the creature's alien world. However, she was not tempted doing that right now, and not without her fellow guardians. For the moment she needed to focus on the unconscious creature and her terrified parents of which probably soon would demand an explanation. But that would have to wait a little more, right now she just wanted to hug them and get them out of here.

Her mother had regained her composure as fast as she saw the creature was out cold and Henderson gone. Now she was standing over her husband together with her child to check him for any serious injuries. Will watched them from where she stood, William was clinging to Dean asking over and over again if he was alright, Susan checked his bruises and wounded arms while the unfortunate man himself tried to make things sound better than it really was.

She folded her wings and went over to them, "Mom, Dean…, William" she addressed them carefully, "How are you?"

"Will," Susan began, not entirely sure what to say "The old man, is he gone?"

"Yes."

"What about the creature, is it dead?"

"I doubt it, from what I have learned so far it can take a beating. I guess it is only unconscious. But from the angle on some of its limbs I don't think it is going to move anytime soon."

Her mother looked from Will over to the broken creature "So what are you going to do with it, take it to the place you spoke of earlier?"

"Yes, I will do so." Will answered, "But first I want to make sure you three are alright."

"I am alright, no worry," Dean said hastily.

"No, you are not!" came the stern reply from Susan, "You are bleeding from your arms and have bruises all over you."

"Here, let me see," said Will and took hold on Dean's arms. "Healing isn't really my specialty, that belongs to Cornelia and Taranee, but I can manage to do a little." With that said, Will gripped around her stepdads bleeding arms, let a warm flow of magic seep through her hands and closed the wounds. The entire process took only a moment and let no scar visible to see later. Both her parents watched speechless and will turned to her mother, "What about your legs, how are they?"

Susan blinked, "My legs?" Then she remembered what had happened to her earlier in the bed, "Oh, they are fine, those are only scratches, nothing more and they have already stopped bleeding but my trousers are although ruined."

"Sorry," Will said, "I can't help your clothes very much."

"Don't worry about that," Susan said and smiled at Will, "We are alive and breathing, that is all that matters." And then she hugged Will and gave in to her tears.

The teenager let her mother cry on her shoulders in the embrace.

Dean stood up, lifted William and joined their embraces, giving all of them a lovingly hug.

They stood like that for a while before Dean found his voice," So, you are going to take the creature to a place you called something, was it Kandrakar. Will you need help getting it there, I am sure we can find some solid rope to bind the creature and we can place it in the trunk on the car and drive it over there."

Will let go of her mother who had stopped crying, "Don't think about it," she said and smiled. "I believe I have a better solution." She stretched out her hand again and let the heart levitate back to here until it floated right above her open palm and said, "Dear Heart, would you please seal this being for me so I can take it to the council of Kandrakar."

The Heart responded by sending a pink beam that struck the evil creature. The creature immediately started to dissolve into tiny bright shining particles that was pulled up in the air and went into the Heart, sealing it inside from where none other than Will could release it.

Both Susan, Dean and her brother followed this with great awe, and when the last of the shining particles had disappeared into the Heart, Will turned to Dean. "Thank you for your offer to drive me to Kandrakar, but I am afraid no vehicle can do that. You see, Kandrakar is a special place and lies very far away, in fact it is not a place on earth but somewhere beyond this and every other universe, outside time and space really. So if you think the trip out here was a long one…" she added humorously.

"Okay," Dean said slowly, " I get it. From what I have seen tonight, I do not doubt what you are saying, but do you think you will be gone for a long time?"

"I don't know, but I do not think so. I know you want an explanation for all this, but before I can answer you, I will need some answers myself, especially what this creature concerns."

"Sounds fair to me," Dean said. "And by the way, do you think we can leave the basement now?"

"Yes, and the house too. Whatever the creature did to lock us inside should have been taken care of now as the creature is out cold," said Will.

"Then, shall we go," said Susan as she took William's hand, eager to leave.

They had just walked a couple of meters when Will suddenly remembered something and excused herself, "Sorry, just wait a moment." She turned around and jogged back to where they just had been, picked up something that lay on the floor and came back.

"What is that" Susan asked and watched the bundle in her daughter's arms.

"I almost forgot about the artifacts," she answered and let her mother see them, "I know they are broken and probably not hiding anything more, but I will take them with me, just in case. I wonder how the creature was able to break them if it couldn't do it by itself."

When they came up from the basement, it was just in time to see the early morning sunrise on the outside giving birth to a new day. She called back the Heart as they no longer needed its light. Will had felt she got back the power to create new light orbs back when she first had pulled out the Heart, but the warm light from it made her want to let it stay out a little longer. Perhaps also to impress the two adults a little bit. Now they walked through the corridor again, looking through the windows to see the snow-clad landscape.

Having nothing to stress for but not wanting to stay at the asylum for a moment longer than necessary, they packed their luggage and went outside.

They opened the huge wooden door and were greeted by fifteen centimeters of pure white snow.

"Great," said Dean, "I hope we don't have to shuffle this to get out of here."

"Well, it is a good thing we came prepared, the car has four wheel drive and studded tires, so if we drive slow, it will be alright." Said Susan and looked at the road that was hidden beneath the white blanket.

The car was covered with just as much snow as the ground around it, so they had to shuffle off some of it first. Dean sat down in the car and turned on the engine, while William jumped into the backseat. To everyone's great relief it started without any problem. Susan opened the door to get in when she realized that Will didn't follow her.

"Will," she said, "Aren't you coming?"

"No mom," she said with a calm smile, "I will go to Kandrakar so I can find a way to permanently get rid of the creature."

"Then we will wait for you."

"No, don't wait her in the cold for me, just go home and I will meet you there."

"But!"

"I will teleport, and even if there have to be a council meeting I will probably be home long before you."

"Not fair," her mother said putting up a fake frown.

"Now, off you go," said Will and closed the door after Susan, Dean stepped carefully on the pedal and the car started pushing its way through the snow.

Susan opened the window to say something to her daughter, but Will was faster.

"Bye everyone, have a safe trip home. I will see you there." She waved her hand before she disappeared in a bright light, leaving the stunned couple alone with their youngest child.

As the car was driving away from the parking lot, Susan looked back through the window and saw their footsteps in the snow. They went from the old building, down the stairs and over to where the car had been, making four imprints in the otherwise beautiful white element. Dean and Susan's prints were deep and the little trip had been enough to make them wet on their feet. William had walked lightly on the snow, but that was naturally as he was very young and didn't weigh nearly as much as the others. Will on the other side had barely sunken into the snow, she had walked upon it and barely left footprints at all. " _How curious_ " Susan thought for herself, but her daughter's mysterious nature had to wait for a little longer.

As they came further and further away, the footprints became almost invisible against the white snow, then the road made a turn and she lost sight of treacherous gothic building and its secrets altogether.

* * *

Will found herself standing in the council hall, there were not as many people there as usual. It was only when WITCH arrived for their official missions that everyone had to be present. Will however was grateful she didn't have to face the entire assembly on her own, but the current oracle Yan Lin, Hay Lins' grandmother, was there to greet her with a smile that only a lovingly grandmother could do.

"Welcome Will," she said warmly, "I understand your little family trip didn't go entirely as planned."

"I guess you can say so," Will answered while looking down studying her shoes. She did not feel entirely well facing the oracle, as she was sure Yan Lin and at least some of the other council members knew her family had learned about her secret. She had a lot of explaining to do.

"You seem to be nervous Will," Yan Lin said sympathetically, "But it is not the creature doings. Is it about your parents knowing?"

"Yes."

Yan Lin smiled and let her old hand glide through Wills' fiery red hair. "It was very wise of you not to tell anyone as it could potentially have given you much trouble when you first became a guardian. On the other side, telling could also have relieved you of much of the burden having to tell your mother lies for you sometimes mysterious absence," she said knowingly. "But keeping all this a secret from your parents was at the very end entirely your own and your friends choice. No one has forbidden you from telling it, as you probably already know from your experience with Matt."

"But do you think they will understand," Will said. "All this must have been quite a shock for them, will they accept me for what I am now and not just an ordinary girl they thought I was, who goes to school and hang out with friends?"

"They are parents, I know they will understand, they love you and you love them back. That is what parents do. You have nothing to be afraid of."

"You think so?" Will said with hope in her voice.

"I don't think," the wise woman said, "I know."

"But you have to be strong for them. They are probably far more scared than you right now. You see, adults tend to think they know all about the world and they being the teachers and guardians of their children, so when this is challenged they become unsure and afraid. And you know what that can do with people."

"Yes, I know."

"That is good," Yan Lin said, "And if you are open for a little advice from me I will suggest you tell your friends when you come home, they will understand and help you. Together I know you can manage everything, you have proven that many times before. But right now I think it is time we take care of the creature you have sealed and I see you have brought something else with you."

Will suddenly remembered the bundle in her arms, "Oh yes of course. I brought with me the artifacts the creature was sealed inside, just in case."

"Don't worry about that," Yan Lin said and picked up one of them to study it, "When the seals were broken they became ordinary objects again. Nothing is left from the creature inside, but I think I will put them away in a storeroom for objects that have lost their magic, perhaps somebody would like to study them in the future. But then again, maybe Dean would like to have his arrow head back, it was after all his aunt's." Yan Lin picked up the named object and gave it back to Will. "Now I would like to hear the entire story of what happened."

"Well," Will began, "It all started with a letter that said Dean's aunt had died…" and then she told the entire story of what had happened and what she learned at the asylum.

After finishing her story, she asked Yan Lin, "There are some things I don't understand, why did my powers fail, why couldn't I summon any light in the basement when I needed it?"

"Your powers were there the entire time," Yan Lin said, "What prevented you from using it properly was your fear."

"But how?"

Yan Lin put the artifact back. "I am sure you have some questions regarding the creature, but the truth is, I do not know much either. It comes from a little known world and Kandrakar does not have any diplomacy with it, it is an old world with many strange and ancient creatures. The thought that somebody have had the power to summon it to earth is very disturbing indeed, the creature has nothing to do there and no other places outside its home world either. Not only that, but the doctor you speak of managed to get through the portal leading to it. That could also be a problem, but mostly for himself. I will look into it myself later, but first, let us send the creature to The Mist Tower, its doings is not without consequences. And oh yes, your question. You and your friends already have experienced what happened to your powers when your emotions become unstable. They can both increase and shrink, perhaps it lies in the creatures nature to make people feel weak and afraid."

"Oh, just wait until you see it." Said Will.

After they had locked away the creature, Will was ready to leave, but she had two last questions for the oracle.

"Dean got an arrowhead from his aunt. She must have known Dr. Henderson had found the rest and sent it to him in order to prevent the doctor from obtaining them all and release the evil creature. But in the end, it was the creature who got hand on them and broken half of them himself, despite the fact that he wasn't supposed to be able to break them. Do you have any idea how? And why didn't the creature attack Betty when she stayed in the asylum after it closed?"

"To answer your last question first; Since it never attacked Henderson nor Dean's aunt, even when she lived there, I guess the creature must have understood the best way for it to be released was to have somebody who knew about it's existence and somehow manipulate them into setting it free. After all, they were both looking for the artifacts. And to answer your first question; I do not know if it ever was impossible for the creature to leave the house, maybe it was a trick to fool Henderson in order to let him believe that he was in control. Maybe the creature knew where Henderson hid the other artifacts and just waited for the right opportunity. Then it could easily reach them when the time was right." Said Yan Lin.

Suddenly, Will understood it all "The wardrobe," she concluded, "But how did it break…" she stopped her own musings as she instantly figured out the answer. "The creature didn't break them, I did. When I fought it the first time, I collided with the wardrobe and destroyed it, the artifacts must have been broken in the process."

Yan Lin smiled, having reached the same conclusion herself, "Maybe it had planned to let you do so, or maybe it was sheer luck on its side. I don't think we will ever now. But right now I think you should go home, call your friends and make ready a hot cup of chocolate for your parents and brother when they come back. Trust me, it will do you all good."

Will thanked Yan Lin for her understanding and advices, then she let the Heart open a portal to earth and went through it, arriving home in the middle of the living room.

* * *

It was not before eight o'clock that two tired parents parked their car inside the garage and walked up the stairs to the apartment where they lived. The journey had been slow due to the snow that had fallen as far south as Heatherfield, and they still had to meet the lawyer on their way back who had forgotten the whole ordeal. There was no surprise when Dean said he didn't want to inherit that place, not even if someone paid him to take it. So the meeting with the lawyer was a rather short one.

Halfway up the stairs they met Irma who was carrying two bags with something inside that looked like sweets.

"Erhm, Hi," said Irma and smiled when she saw the weary couple who came up behind her. "Will called some time ago and told what happened," she began carefully, quite unsure on how Wills' parents would react to her now as they knew their secret. "Uhm, she didn't tell me everything, she said she would do that when everyone had arrived."

"Everyone?" Susan said.

"You, me, Cornelia, Taranee and Hay Lin," Irma answered fast.

"Figured it," Susan replied dryly. "Then why wait here, let's walk up and go inside, the drive was terribly long and I can't wait to sit down on a soft sofa."

They walked upstairs and were greeted by a cheerful Hay Lin when they opened the door. "Welcome home," she said, "There is dinner ready for you if you are hungry, Taranee and Will is in the kitchen and Cornelia is fixing the table, just tell me if there is anything you need." Having said that, she immediately spotted the torn clothes Susan and Dean wore. "Oh my, I will make sure Cornelia fix your clothes" (having an affinity to earth, Cornelia could easily mend and repair any material).

They didn't even have time to respond before the cheerful girl ran to tell Cornelia.

Dean closed the door behind them and walked into the living room where they found the blond girl setting the table. "Hello" she greeted them as she sat down the last of the plates she was carrying.

"Hi Cornelia," both Susan and Dean replied simultaneously.

"Hi Nelia," William followed suit, already knowing her and the others well from their " _special lectures_ " when she and the rest of the girls were teaching him magic.

"Dinner is almost ready," Cornelia said, not knowing what else to say.

"Thank you very much, Susan said, but we have traveled the entire day and I would like to change my clothes first."

"Me too," Dean added.

"When you have done that, let Cornelia see to those," Hay Lin chirped from behind.

"No, don't think about that," Susan said.

Cornelia looked at them and saw their clothes, especially Dean's were a mess, "What happened to your clothes?" she said.

"The boogieman did it." Susan said.

"The what!" Came a shocked reply from Irma who had both her hands inside a bag with chocolate bars, not believing what she heard "But I have always have been told there is no such thing as the boogeyman!"

"That was what I thought too until last night," Susan said and looked at her with a knowing stare, "That and many other things."

Both Irma, Cornelia and Hay Lin was spared from having to answer that for now, because at that moment, Will and Taranee appeared from the kitchen with a saucepan and some pots. Susan and Dean hurried to change their clothes and after that, they all sat together around the table and listened to Will who told of what had happened.

"Wow" said Irma after a while when she held the arrowhead in her hand. "It is almost hard to believe that something _that_ scary could come out of this little thing. It looks cool by the way. Is it really Indian?"

"Yes Irma." Dean said. "And if you think it is cool you can keep it."

"But it was a gift from your late aunt? And it is an historical artifact, doesn't scrap like that interest you?"

Dean laughed at Irma's choice of words, something never changed. "I am not the slightest interested to keep that little piece of scarp as you call it. Not after this."

"Okay then, thank you."

Later when dinner was finished, Irma did the dish wash in record time thanks to her water magic while Taranee made hot chocolate for everyone. Then it was time for the five girls to tell the adults about their powers and how they came to be guardians.

"I am sorry for keeping all this a secret from you two," Will said to her parents when the story was over. "I know it must be strange to you suddenly having to learn about all this. I hope you are not too angry at me for never saying anything."

Susan looked her daughter in the eye for a little while as she thought of what to say, but finally she decided what to speak. "Perhaps this was for the best." Susan said and gave her daughter an understanding smile, "It is much easier to accept this now when you have been doing this for years and feel safe about yourself, your powers and responsibilities, and not if you had been younger and far less experienced. I also fully understand that none of us would have escaped from that terrifying creature if it hadn't been for what you are doing, so I can safely say you saved our lives up there. Thank you. And judging from what else you have told me tonight, I see why this guardian duty is something you truly want to do, and I will not deny you that. I am also glad I now to have learned why you behave so strange sometimes. It will be easier now as I know why, and I will not try stopping you from doing your duty, but promise me always to tell when you are going so I don't have to worry. I guess this goes for Dean as well." First looking to her husband, who nodded positively, before she turned to the other W.I.T.C.H. girls. "But don't you think also your parents should now about this too?"

"No," the answer came from Irma, "Daddy police would never accept that I have greater authority than him. He would have a fit if he knew that after all his years as police he only has Heatherfield while I got every universe in existence," she said jokingly referring him to be responsible only for the (not so little) local police force in their home city.

"I don't think mom and dad would take it lightly that I expose myself to what they would see as danger, no matter what excuse." Taranee said.

"Mom and dad would have had a heart attack if they knew," Cornelia said, "And Lillian would never give me a break if she knew I could do magic."

"Hey, but I am sure your parents would cheer on you," said Irma and nudged Hay Lin friendly. "Remember, you have your grandma as your partner in crime and by coincidence also have one of the highest ranking offices in the universe. They wouldn't dare to refuse you anything."

Hay Lin giggled but said, "I don't think I would. I would like to keep it a secret, that way they won't have to worry about me whenever they don't see me around."

Dean watched his former students and said, "You are all becoming wonderful adults, whatever you decide to say or not to say is your own choice. Already you are far more experienced than most people are and must have learned much on your travels that will benefit you later in life. If you want to keep all this a secret, than you can count on us to keep it". Then he raised his left eyebrow and said with a grin, "On the other hand; if we tried to tell it, who would have believed us anyway?"

This gave off a reaction of giggles coming from the girls who imagined their old history teacher desperately trying to convince their parents that their daughters on regular basis traveled to worlds in other universes. That would have been a hilarious sight.

Everybody then gave the two adults a little glimpse of what they were able to do, they already knew Wills power, but having to be politely introduced to the TV, the telephone, the PC, the refrigerator and their bathroom weight (now Susan understood why Will had insisted on a mechanical one for herself) was quite an experience. Their adventures had to wait for another time as it was getting late and people had to go home.

When everyone had gone home, it was time for bed as they didn't get much sleep last night and they fell fast asleep.

* * *

Irma was home alone. Christopher was staying with a friend that night and her parents were visiting Anna's parents and now she was sitting watching TV, far into the late hours, eating chocolate and chips. As she was slowly falling to sleep in front of the zombie box, suddenly a freezing cold feeling swept up her spine and woke her from her slumber.

" _What in the world was that?_ " she thought, " _Why do I suddenly feel so cold, perhaps it is time to go to bed?_ "

Irma was just about to stand up from the sofa when she coincidently looked through the window right beside the TV.

What she saw made her eyes bulge and she screamed the loudest and most blood chilling scream she had done in her entire life. In her state of panic she did the first thing that came to her mind, which was teleporting herself away, and before she became any wiser, she found herself screaming standing on top of Will in her bed.

The reaction (from the sleeping girl under her) was immediate. After being so brutally torn out of her sleep, Will, and very soon her parents, found themselves trying to calm down a horrified Irma.

"Hhhhe waas there, staring at me thrthrough the wiwindow," Irma stuttered.

"Who was there?" Will asked.

"The most horrifying and terrible man I have ever seen, He had white hair, stiff and pointing to every direction like straw, his face was pale and didn't seem to fit, the skin was so tight that every tendon was visible and he looked at me with completely black eyes. Irma hulked.

"Irma I will call the other girls and we will go and have a look at it together." Will said and placed her arm around her friend.

"I tell you, there are no sign that anyone having been outside the window," Cornelia said sleepy and irritated to the water guardian. "There is twenty centimeters of untouched snow under it, you must have seen it on the TV."

"But I swear it was there," Irma replied.

"No, you are hallucinating."

"I am not!"

"Would you to stop bickering, it takes us nowhere," said Taranee as she tried to calm an angry Cornelia before she attacked Irma in her own house.

Whatever Cornelia or Irma were going to say next were suddenly interrupted by the shaky voice of Hay Lin, "No, Irma really did see someone."

Everyone turned to look at Hay Lin who stood pale and stared at the floor behind the sofa.

"But it wasn't outside the window. He was right behind her, what she saw was his reflection against the dark window glass. There are footprints here from someone who had walked in with snow on their shoes."

End…?

* * *

 **That was it. I hope you liked my story, it has been really fun writing this. I made a twisted end (perhaps you have read or seen a similar ending before cause I borrowed some elements to it) because:**

 **One: I grew up with reading Goosebumbs by R.L. Stine who often use a twisted end.**

 **Two: It is an open ending in case I, or somebody else(!), would like to write a follow up story.**

 **I am gonna post some short stories later called "Enchanted days" and they will be (almost) without references to either the comic or the cartoon universe so everyone can read them as long as you like WITCH. I will write some more about them on my profile page later.**

 **And pleaseee review and tell me what you think.**


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